Pirate Bay Trial Day 5: Peter’s “Political Trial”

It’s Day 5 at The Pirate Bay trial. Will colorful site spokesman Peter Sunde stand up to the pressure? There seems little doubt of that, but the Prosecution are trying to make it as difficult as possible by introducing yet more uncleared evidence. Peter demands of the Prosecution, “Is this a political trial?”

Friday, the fifth day of the trial and Peter Sunde, aka brokep, is being questioned by the Prosecution. Håkan Roswall started off by asking Peter if he ever had dealings with The Pirate Bay’s (TPB) computer systems - Peter said he did, but in a limited fashion.
Roswall then inquired about Peter’s involvement in TPB’s advertising deals, in particular one with ad company Random Media which Peter signed up to as a ‘Founder’ of the site. Peter said that this was connected with new website project which would draw funds from TPB’s adverttising revenue.
Roswall then brought up Piratbyran - the Swedish Bureau of Piracy - and asked Peter if this organization is critical of copyright. “Not critical directly,” Peter replied. “There are many differing views.”
Roswall then turned to Peter’s stance toward copyright. “This is a difficult question to answer,” Peter said. “I like things that are not protected by copyright, this is a non-issue.”
Peter was asked if he knew of TPB’s “legal” page. He said he was aware of it. Roswall, presumably trying to speak the same ‘language’ as the somewhat techie defendants, got tied up a little;
“When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the Prosecutor. “We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “We use AFK.” “IRL?” questioned the judge. “In Real Life,” the Prosecutor explained to the judge.
“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK - Away From Keyboard.” “Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”
One of the themes so far is how the Prosecutor is struggling to come to terms with the somewhat chaotic structure of the TPB’s operations. Trying to pin down Peter’s role, he asked about his position as TPB spokesman - Peter said he took the unofficial position since no-one else in the team wanted to do it. A request from a journalist or someone else for a comment on something came in, said Peter, and he simply took it in hand.
Then the attention turned to Peter’s relationship with advertiser Oded Daniel and whether or not Peter has handled money from him. “Have you never wondered why you got these earnings reports? Isn’t this type of thing a little beyond your role of spokesman?” asked Roswall.
“I think it is his [Oded Daniel's] way of trying to motivate people. He sends so much weird email, I don’t read half of it. He could have been using me to get more contact with Fredrik and Gottfrid,” said Peter. The Prosecutor continued to struggle with the apparent lack of a formal decision-making structure at TPB, continually referring to TPB as a “company”.
It was revealed that Peter and Gottfrid met Oded Daniel in 2005/2006. Carl Lundström and Peter Sunde met just a handful of times.
“Is it true you went to Israel to meet Oded in 2006?” said Roswall. “Yes,” responded Peter.
“Why did you go to meet him?” questioned Roswall. “Because he asked me to go there as his guest,” said Peter. “Did you not go there to go to the beach?” “Yes, I did, very often.”
Roswall then questioned Peter on many emails back and forth from Oded Daniel to TPB, many centered on the proposed TPB YouTube-like side-project for streaming video called VideoBay. Referring to development of the search capability on TPB, the Prosecutor appeared to be suggesting that Peter worked on TPB on technical issues in a response to mails from Oded Daniel, but Peter said that others carried out the work.
At one stage Peter said he came up with the idea of selling statistics from TPB, believing people would be interested to read them in newspapers etc. When Roswall asked Peter if he ever expected to receive money from TPB, the answer was “no”.
After the break, it was IFPI’s Peter Danowsky turn to start questioning Peter, beginning with his education. Peter says he dropped out of school but later learned English and computer programming from the Internet. Danowsky then turned his attention to ad-company Random Media, again referring to emails from TPB.
Then, in a repeat of yesterday’s performance, the Prosecution started again to introduce more evidence that had not been cleared pre-trial. Danowsky continued to present new evidence in the form of some newspaper articles to try to contradict what Peter had said.
According to multiple reports, not only was the defense annoyed at the Prosecution’s unacceptable actions, but the judge was too. The judge reprimanded Danowsky and the defense told him to cut out this American-style trial strategy. The Court then adjourned for 10 minutes to discuss the situation.
Upon restart, the judge said the decision is that any new material the Prosecution is planning to bring up needs to be submitted before the questioning has started, as is proper. The Prosecution then claimed to hand over all their surprise material they were holding and the Court took another break so that Peter could read through everything. This was later confirmed to be 9 new documents.
After the break Danowsky’s questioning of Peter resumed. “Did you hold a lecture called “How to dismantle a billion dollar industry?” “Yes I did,” replied Peter.
Danowsky started to quote some of Peter’s comments from his blog at Brokep.com. Peter says that everything he writes on his blog isn’t about TPB even if prosecutors would like it to be the case.
Pressed further on his opinions on copyright, Peter asked Danowsky, “That is a political issue. Is this a political trial or a legal trial?” Danowsky continued, ignoring the question but Peter pulled him back. “I want an answer from the lawyer Danowsky. Is this a political trial? Can I get a reply?”
“How can copyright law be a political issue?” said Danowsky, but had no follow up questions. Peter was surprised, “No follow-ups? Ok, let me elaborate…” and he went on at length about the context of Danowsky’s various questions.
Danowsky asked Peter about a time when he said that rights holders had acted illegally. Peter said this was a reference to Warner Brothers that had attacked file-sharing sites with hacking, aka anti-p2p activity.
Danowsky asked Peter what the purpose of TPB was. “It is to enable users to share their material with others,” said Peter. “Even though it is copyrighted?” questioned Danowsky. “That can sometimes be the sad consequences,” Peter replied.
After a brief appearance by movie company lawyer Wadsted, the court stopped for lunch.
On return, Peter Altin questioned his client, Peter Sunde. He asked him if he was responsible for TPB or if he felt responsible due to his comments for the site. On both, the reply was negative.
Altin put it to Peter that he could’ve made lots of money from TPB. “No, I don’t have a million sitting around somewhere. That would be nice, though.”
When Altin asked about the amount of copyright material tracked by TPB, Peter explained that he carried out a survey of a random 1000 torrents from the tracker and 80% of the content linked by the site was not copyrighted, noting that there is much more illegal material on YouTube.
Then Altin’s interview with Carl Lundström began. He told the court how he met Fredrik at an event called Dreamhack in Jönköping, Sweden during 2004. The Court heard that Lundström always believed that TPB operated within the law but they needed resources. This situation led to him signing an agreement with Fredrik that they could have two computers at Rix Telecom in Gothenburg, along with him being a technician there. The deal would allow TPB to develop with a little financial support from Lundström, and then when the site grew and became a success, TPB would stay with Rix and pay their way as a regular customer.
Next it was Roswall’s turn to interview Lundström. Lundström admitted that he knew that there was piracy connected with TPB, and that he understood that TPB is a “file-sharing site, a torrent site”.
Speaking of the advertising he took responsibility for the plan believing it was a way the site could pay for itself in the future. He went on to say that he had no idea of any political motivations of the site and what interested him was the desire of the other defendants to make the biggest BitTorrent site in the world. “And I liked that,” he said.
“I can understand that,” replied Roswall.
Then followed discussion about the equipment given to TPB by Lundström. The cost of the equipment was 18,000 kronor and the bill was paid by Lundström. Lundström made clear that he didn’t want to become a partner, but that he did continue to be interested in the project, and that he gave some advise to the TPB team a few times.
After a short break Lundström was further questioned by the prosecution. They asked him about his contact with Oded Daniel, who handles advertisement on TPB. Lundström admitted to know Oded very well.
When movie industry lawyer Wadsted asked Lundström why an 48 year old businessman hangs out with people from TPB his lawyer jumped in and told his client not to respond.
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the hearings ended, after discussing next week’s schedule.

Written by enigmax on February 20, 2009.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.......

Day 4 - Pirate Bay Defense Calls Foul Over Evidence

Day 4 of The Pirate Bay trial has seen the focus on Fredrik who was questioned at length. When it was movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted’s turn, she wasted no time in unexpectedly introducing new evidence. Both the defense and the court complained at this point, with Wadsted choosing to shout down the judge.

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall began the day by again referencing the case in Finland against the administrators of Finreactor. Fredrik’s lawyer Jonas Nilsson requested a copy of the case notes for the defense. It seems comparisons of the two cases will be drawn by the prosecution later in the trial.
Carl Lundström’s lawyer Per E Samuelsson continued with his client’s defense, reiterating the weakness of the links between him and the other defendants, and The Pirate Bay operation as a whole. Samuelsson also pointed to Lundström’s email correspondence in 2005 with Gottfrid and Fredrik, where they discussed the possibility of having to move the site to another country. This, he said, was an indication that the defendants kept an eye on the changes in the law and were mindful that they should operate legally within it.
In the meantime, it came to the court’s attention that Tobias Andersson, a future witness in the case, was sitting in the court. He was asked to leave the room, with permission to continue listening on the audio feed next door. He will testify later on.
After a break, the court’s attention switched to Fredrik Neij (TiAMO). The court heard that Fredrik was never a member of Piratbyran and he had no ideological motivation to join TPB. Instead, Fredrik was attracted to the site by the BitTorrent technology. He joined to “..play with The Pirate Bay, just as I wanted,” he said.
The defense said that Fredrik was always mindful of the law and had a desire to operate within it, consulting lawyers to ensure his activities were legal.
In a reference to companies like MediaDefender, Fredrik noted that “anti-p2p companies access our tracker and manipulate our statistics.” He said that although a torrent may have only been uploaded once, these anti-p2p activities inflate the stats on the tracker to indicate that more transfers took place than in reality.
Fredrik was then questioned about his relationship with advertiser Oded Daniel. When the prosecution asked if Oded was involved in the technical aspects of TPB, Fredrik replied.. “No, he’s not good at that. He uses Windows, so…” There was laughter heard on the live audio feed after that remark, not from the court room, but from the listening lounge next door where the bloggers are situated.
Fredrik was asked about the significance of the site’s name, but shrugged and repeated that his interest is merely in the technology.
Fredrik was further questioned by Håkan Roswall, with the Prosecutor pointing out that during his police interview, Fredrik admitted that there may be links to copyright works on TPB. Fredrik said he knew about these due to the legal complaints the site received, noting that the complaints referred only to inapplicable US laws. He went on to deny having received any of these personally, but while he admitted he seen them, he denied creating any of the infamous responses.
Roswall asked Fredrik if he had ever been a seeder on the site. Fredrik admitted to seeding torrents but noted that he only did this with copyright-free material.
When questioned about the situation of some torrents being removed from the site due to bad labeling, the court heard from the defense that TPB site is uncensored, with thousands of new torrents added every day and it is an impossible task to review them all. The tracker is completely open and anyone can and does add to it regularly, completely without any input or correspondence with TPB staff.
Just before lunch, Monique Wadsted for the movie companies took over questioning Fredrik. After a discussion over the way emails are handled at The Pirate Bay, out of the blue she began to introduce new evidence which had not previously been disclosed to the defense, in what is being viewed as an attempt to unsettle Fredrik.
She asked about Fredrik’s connections to other torrent sites, namely OscarTorrents and EurovisionTorrents and he denied being personally connected to them. Noting the breach of protocol, the judge asked if it was acceptable for the court to be considering evidence that was not already presented pre-trial. Monique Wadsted tried to shout down the judge, but that didn’t really help much. The court then took a break.
After the lunch break IFPI’s lawyer Peter Danowsky continued with Fredrik’s questioning. He tried to pin something on him, but Fredrik pointed out that the email he’s referring to is a reply, and that the quotes mean that he didn’t write that part of the email.
Fredrik’s lawyer is next up to ask questions, and the prosecution was educated on the subject of open BitTorrent trackers, BitTorrent swarms and the fact that torrent files can be distributed through means other than the TPB, like email or FTP.
Then the Prosecutor handed over a printed page from TPB and said: “This is a printout from a part of your web page. You call this a screenshot?” Fredrik answered: “This isn’t a screenshot, just a printed page.” Fredrik then explains what’s on the print (a Pink Panther torrent), and how the upload process on TPB works.
Next it’s Gottfrid’s turn to answer questions. The prosecution emphasizes the financial issues, and specifically the link with Oded. When asked if Gottfrid was in charge of ad sales he answered: “No, I tried to get away from that because of time issues. I had a business to run before you came and took it all away.”
The prosecution further questioned Gottfrid about moderation issues, replies to copyright holders and his involvement in developing the site. The prosecutor pushed hard on whether Peter Sunde had worked on the layout and graphics for the site. “To my knowledge, he is neither designer nor graphic artist,” Gottfried replied.
Wadsted later asked Gottfrid how they handle torrents that (allegedly) link to child porn. He said that in such a case they would inform the police. She then asked if they removed those torrents. He said “some”. “Not all?” was Wadsted’s reply. Gottfrid explained that it is not up to them to investigate crimes, but that they do inform the police. “We can’t do investigations of our own. And if the police say we should remove a torrent, we will,” he said.
Gottfrid further said that Peter Sunde has nothing to do with technical administration, design, layout, ad sales or any hands-on stuff with the site. He’s just been a spokesperson for The Pirate Bay. “Neither me or Neij work well in furnished rooms. Peter was better on the verbal issues and media,” he said.
Around 4 PM the Prosecutor announced that he wanted to bring in additional evidence, some actual torrent files on a diskette (he probably meant CD). The Prosecutor demanded a statement on it at 9 in the morning tomorrow. The defense wasn’t too happy about this, and Gottfrid demanded all torrents instead of four.
Update:Just a passing thought…..While Wadsted may have thought she was being clever mentioning possible child porn tracked by The Pirate Bay earlier, it’s not beyond reason that when Gottfrid said that they don’t remove all such torrents, this could be on the instruction of the police - presumably so they can track any offenders. In this situation, the police must understand that Pirate Bay neither committed any offense, nor encouraged it, nor know the people involved. Is there something important here? I guess the court will decide.

Written by enigmax on February 19, 2009.

Day 3 - The Pirate Bay’s ‘King Kong’ Defense

The Pirate Bay trial is moving forward rapidly and again the day in court has ended early. On the third day the prosecution presented the amended charges. The defendants all called for acquittal while Carl Lundström’s lawyer scored points with the already legendary ‘King Kong’ defense.

The third day of the trial started with prosecutor Håkan Roswall who presented his updated/amended charges to the Court, taking into consideration the developments of yesterday (50% charges removed). He characterized these amendments as a “small change”.
The defense lawyers responded saying, “We don’t agree that this is just a small adjustment of the claims, but we’ll return to the matter later.”
According to IFPI’s Peter Danowsky, the damages claimed from The Pirate Bay are the same as if the site had ‘legally’ obtained licenses to distribute the music world-wide, regardless of whether all the downloaders had later decided to buy the music or not. Effectively, they are trying to say that one download=one lost sale. They are talking about imposing the costs of a “global distribution license” on TPB.
For the song “Let it Be” by The Beatles, IFPI is asking for 10 times the damages, since the band’s music isn’t officially available online. Interesting logic here - perhaps if The Beatles music was made officially available, people wouldn’t even need to pirate it. The same 10X multiplier is used for all material ‘made available’ before official release, referring to this charge as a special “preview license.”
Peter Danowsky disputes the claims of the defense that they have no funds and cannot pay damages. He called TPB “organized crime on a grand scale,” which netted “significant revenues.”
“If I have all this money they claim, someone has apparently stolen it from me,” Peter Sunde twittered in a reponse.
“Maybe [they are not able to pay] the whole of the claimed damages, but a lot anyway,” said Danowsky. The damages being claimed against the four defendants total 117 million kronor ($13 million).
Sony complained in court that The Pirate Bay never remove torrents on copyright holders request, but that they have the ability to do so since they remove torrents that are named in a way that doesn’t reflect the material they link to. They note that The Pirate Bay has a bad attitude to complaints and ridicules the complainer. Sony says they have suffered many lost sales, suffered damage to their goodwill and other damages to their market.
Henrik Pontén from Svenska Antipiratbyrån (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau) said that their position is very similar to that of the IFPI. Their claim for damages is based on what it would’ve cost for The Pirate Bay to have acquired a global distribution license. This value was doubled to account for an alleged “loss of goodwill”.
Next up, Monique Wadsted for the movie industry. She talked about various alleged infringements, including those on the TV show ‘Prison Break’. Again, she feels that since the infringements took place before an official launch of the media, the damages are calculated based on the cost of a special “global preview license”.
During the second half of the morning session the defense lawyers had the chance to respond. Due to the reduction in the charges, the four defendants say they have no responsibility for the charges that remain.
The lawyers representing all four called on the court for the acquittal of their clients.
Fredrik Neij’s lawyer pointed out that the download figures as reported by the site were far from accurate, and that they should therefore not be used as evidence. It was further argued that uploading a torrent does not mean that the copyrighted files are also ‘available’, since it then has to be seeded. The torrent files, on the other had, are not exclusively on The Pirate Bay, and can also be found through other search engines such as Google.
Gottfrid Svartholm’s lawyer stated that users generate the content on The Pirate Bay, and that his defendant has no control over it. Peter Sunde’s lawyer pointed out that his client was merely the spokesperson of the site, and said that Peter was not responsible for anything else. It was further argued that the correlation between the number of downloads and damages suffered by the copyright holders is non-existent.
As Carl Lundström’s lawyer, Per E Samuelsson took the floor and pointed out the weaknesses in the prosecutor’s case. The defense argued that prosecutors have failed to prove that Lundström has been involved in any transfer of any copyrighted material. He played the King Kong defense.
“EU directive 2000/31/EG says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong,” Samuelsson told the court.
“According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia,” the lawyer added.
After the King Kong defense the court decided to adjourn the court case, which will continue tomorrow on day 4. Thus far, the trial is ahead of schedule.
Peter said that after today’s proceedings they all went for some pizza, where they met the whole opposing side. He asked if they could pick up the check. “They refused,” he said.

Written by enigmax on February 18, 2009.

50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped

What has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker. Many of the screenshots being used clearly state there is no connection to the tracker. Additionally, prosecutor Håkan Roswall didn’t adequately explain the function of DHT which allows for so called “trackerless” torrents.
The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.
This has resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.
The defense was happy to see that already half of the charges were dropped during the morning session of the second day. “This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday,” said defense lawyer Per E Samuelson.
Peter Althin, representing Peter Sunde said, “It is clear that this is an advantage for the accused.”
“EPIC WINNING LOL,” Peter himself later commented on Twitter.
IFPI was quick to release a statement where they try to spin the dropped charges into something good. “It’s a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. In fact it simplifies the prosecutor’s case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works,” IFPI’s legal counsel said.
During the remainder of the morning session it was mostly prosecutor Håkan Roswall talking. Among other things he explained in detail how email works (made no mistakes there). Several details on the hardware that was taken during the raid in 2006 were discussed, as well as invoices and email conversations about server costs.
After the lunch break, around 1:30pm the court decided to end the day early. Tomorrow morning the prosecution will continue to build (or break) their case and on Thursday the defense will have its say.

Written by enigmax on February 20, 2009.

The Pirate Bay Trial - First Day in Court

This morning the trial of The Pirate Bay started. Without doubt, it will be the most important case the file-sharing community has ever witnessed. Here are the key parts of Day 1, distilled from the hundreds of ongoing reports.

The day started this morning at 08:30, with Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (aka Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) arriving at the court with the S23K bus. The bus will operate as their press-center in the weeks to come. Outside the court were several Pirate Bay supporters waving Pirate Flags.

The trial began roughly half an hour later. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall read out the charges that can be best summarized as “commercial copyright infringement”. The plaintiffs are Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal. Lundström’s lawyer pointed out that the prosecutor may have drawn up some charges incorrectly. Interestingly, Lundström is the only one of the defendants with two lawyers, one of which is a copyright expert.
Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter stated their defense. They all pleaded not guilty.
Roswall then went on to present the claims of the media outfits, and described how The Pirate Bay works, with a little bit of history. He went on till the lunch break, but meanwhile Rick Falkvinge of the Pirate Party couldn’t resist accessing The Pirate Bay site from his seat in the courtroom.
The prosecution said that TPB was aimed at Swedish users until late 2004, when Fredrik had contact with Carl Lundström. They say Lundström helped them develop the project by donating funds and resources to enable the growth of the site.
The prosecution suggested that The Pirate Bay was a commercial organization, with Carl Lundström as a shareholder and financier of the company.
They also said that The Pirate Bay investigated the possibility of moving to Argentina after concerns over changes in Swedish copyright law during 2005. The prosecution claimed there were plans with Carl Lundström to set up a company in British Virgin Islands.
Discussion ensued over the advertising on The Pirate Bay site, and the involvement of one Daniel Oded and companies Random Media and Transworld Advertising.

Following the lunch break, proceedings continued with prosecutor Håkan Roswall failing to start up his computer. For several minutes, listeners of the live audio could hear mouse-clicks as Roswall, who earlier claimed to be an expert on computer crimes, tried to get his PowerPoint presentation on the screen. He was eventually ordered by the judge to stick to his papers and continue.
Information was presented about various movie, music and game downloads co-ordinated by The Pirate Bay before the raid in 2006. Roswall further discussed the total number of seeds and peers on the tracker, all part of the evidence that was previously gathered by the plaintiffs.
During the afternoon, Peter Sunde sent a message: “How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We’re winning so hard.” Peter points out that the prosecutor is having difficulty working out the difference between megabits and megabytes.
The case was adjourned around 4pm, and will continue tomorrow morning.