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In the Wake of The Pirate Bay

1 June 2006 9:55 by Dave "Davedough" Horvath | 16 comments

The file sharing community was shocked the morning of May 31, 2006 when it was announced that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in association with the IFPI (International Federation and Phonographic Industry) and Swedish law enforcement searched and confiscated a number of servers which held information towards alleged illegal activity by The Pirate Bay. What they failed to announce, however is how many "legitimate" business they've also inadvertantly taken down who were sharing server space with machines housed in Rix|Port80 (the ISP responsible for providing service for PRQ, thepiratebay.org hosting company). During the raid, every single server hosted by PRQ was seized by Swedish police, despite proper labelling which gave clear indication several of the servers had no affiliation with The Pirate Bay.

On these servers, some 200-300 domain names were being hosted and served. Some of these domains contained businesses who's sole method of income to cover operational costs, come from their website. Most of the servers that were confiscated were in no way related to the online copyright wars that the MPAA and RIAA have launched.

One of these affected customers, Gameswitch.co.uk, which provides hosting services for multi-player online games had this to say. "Our hardware was severed from the internet at approximately 12 noon Swedish time today without notice or explanation and currently is believed to be in the possession of Stockholm Police," GameSwitch Director, Christopher Adams. He went on to say, "GameSwitch has been given a massive blow today that could, depending on the further unfolding of events, take years to recover from, also shared by many other companies firmly based in New Technology principles in the same building. This is the kind of industry that governments should be seeking to promote and encourage rather than wipe out in the fallout what some might suggest as an unfounded display of desultory, ill-considered foreign appeasement, and we sincerely hope that those affected, ourselves included, and thus our customers, will be compensated accordingly.�

Another company, Anstalten was reported as saying. "For us it�s critical to not be online. Every day we have between 100 and 500 new members - which we won�t have for every day we are down. Also our members need to find somewhere else to spend their time online, and we might lose members because of this. We are also depending on paying members. It�s free to be a member, but for VIP (Photo album and some other extra functions) many members pay [a few dollars per] month.

But the biggest loss for us is advertisements/banners. Companies who have paid for one week banner need to be compensated. It�s not always possible to just give them a free week because of bookings; and campaigns have a time limit. Every hour we are offline is tough for us, but the Swedish police doesn�t give any answers. They promised to call me today if I sent them a fax, but they still haven�t called, more then 5 hours after the fax was sent."

The officials behind these raids have stated that their motivation for such seizures was to secure economic interests of the entertainment industry, although not one of the organizations has been able to produce a clear cut example of the dollar losses directly caused by downloading copyrighted material.

The economic side effects of these raids are clear, what others may not realize is that there is a political agenda here as well. PiratByr�n is a Swedish organization which lobbies to educate the masses of copyright liberation. Through their success in the issues surrounding piracy they have gained momentum to become one of the most influential organization in Swedish politics. Their name roughly translates to "The Pirate Bureau". PiratByr�n's servers were also confiscated, thus leaving the question of how will this action affect the Swedish political movements who rely on their lobbying for funding.

Source:
Slyck.com

Permalink to this article

Ads on Pirate Bay get special attention from prosecutors (9 July 2006)

Actual Letter Sent to Swedish Officials Prior to TPB Raid (20 June 2006)

Piratebay hopes to win compensation (2 June 2006)

Swedish Police Website Hacked (2 June 2006)

Movie studios and producers accused of screenplay theft (31 May 2006)

MPAA celebrates fall of The Pirate Bay (31 May 2006)

Swedish Police raid ThePirateBay.org (31 May 2006)

TorrentSpy accuses MPAA of hiring hacker (25 May 2006)

Germany raids 3500 PCs in anti-piracy campaign (23 May 2006)

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Discuss this article!
evnflow (Senior Member) 1 June 2006 10:09
i hate to make it sound like a conspiracy theory...but does anyone else think that the MPAA and IFPI, may have been trying to kill two birds with one stone...in one fell swoop(gotta love the puns, haha), they have not only taken out Pirate Bay, but also one of their main opposing threats(well in Sweden anyways)...watch and let the MPAA and IFPI say, "well...there has to be casualties in every war"...i thought warrants had to be very specific in what "items" that can and can not be taken...i know that there are "blanket" warrants...but that mostly includes a home, car, or property(land)...and had to be directly linked to the case in question....just my two cents(sorry about the rant)...holla ;) [ + quote]
vegeta66 (Inactive) 1 June 2006 11:44
i agree with you,.... [ + quote]
ktulu14 (Member) 1 June 2006 11:58
It is obvious to me that the police are blind when it comes to executing their orders. Why did they take the servers that were clearly marked as being nothing to do with TPB? My sympathies are with those companies whose revenue is being affected from their legitimate businesses. This is not an attack on TPB, I am an avid torrent user and on occasion used TPB when I couldn't find what i was looking for in other places. It will be a resource sdaly missed if they cannot get up and going in some obscure offshore island outside the control of the MPAA/RIAA/IFPI (<EXPLETIVES> the lot of them). Back to to the police issue, they should return the servers that are not under the confines of the warrant used and which have no affiliation to TPB so that the companies who have been affected can back to serving their customers. Long live the pirates!!! [ + quote]
nonoitall (Member) 1 June 2006 12:25
Maybe now more people will start seeing that the entertainment industry doesn't give a rat's @$$ about legitimate business practices or doing what's right for people. They only care how much money they can get in their pockets, regardless of who else has to suffer for it. [ + quote]
ripfuel (Inactive) 1 June 2006 12:42
Do These cats at the MPAA think that they can stop innovative people from building great sites ? I mean come on, for every site they take down...we the file sharing community will be there instantly with another site. This is all about who pays who the most $$$$$. Hollywood is paying very heavily to have the MPAA go full force at the P2P community, but if they would take that cash & put it to lowering the price of the high a$$ material maybe we could afford to buy it. Keep strong P2P community...Keep STRONG! [ + quote]
gogochar (Senior Member) 1 June 2006 13:40
WTF do they think they're doing taking out billions of other's share in the market. I think the MPAA has just founded another slogan-> "If we lose money, others will pay, even if it causes millions of their dollars!" If the MPAA thinks they can get away with this, I'd like the idea of the MPAA taking away everything the world has come to love. Screw the MPAA. I was a supporter my whole life until recently. All the MPAA knows how to do is wreck havoc in innocent people's lives. The MPAA has no heart. As the old saying goes "Money is the root of all evil!" And the MPAA has just redefined that statement. [ + quote]
KillMan (Inactive) 1 June 2006 15:28
All I have to say is the MPAA should have to pay for it all. [ + quote]
david100k (Junior Member) 1 June 2006 16:40
asss hollles that my 2 cents shit like that makes me purchas less and less dvd and cd's the more they push the less i buy fack em all !!!!!! long live the scene [ + quote]
addugg (Member) 2 June 2006 1:28
ooh this has me shaken,im goin to go calm my nervous with a isohunt download..... [ + quote]
janrocks (Inactive) 2 June 2006 1:51
I thought TPB moved to Bulgaria last summer because of this threat.. They said they had. Remember kids...downloading copyrighted material that you have every opportunity to go into a shop and buy at grossly inflated (nay racketeering) prices is immoral and illegal..Somebody is being robbed of a few more dollars that could be sitting doing nothing with millions more of their compadres in a numbered tax free bank account somewhere... lol..How would you feel if that somebody was you being robbed blind?? [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 2 June 2006 5:42
janrocks Everytiem I buy new overprice crap I feellike I am being robbed,my uncel bought a new copy of XP pro SP2 for 140,I am getting mine from ebay a used copy of SP1 for 20 and guess what tis leagle !! as long as the key is good L** [ + quote]
iamcoolj (Newbie) 2 June 2006 9:03
I have a query. When did Sweden get purchased by the entertainment industry? Is it that they have so much money in the banks there that the Swedish police work for them now? No more shopping at "Ikea" tee hee. [ + quote]
Wolf354 (Newbie) 2 June 2006 13:44
Well if this fails to MPAA it will be funny to see if they start a war against Major IP's who are the ones who are caching more with this copyright story. What I pay monthly to my IP would allow me to go 9 or 10 tomes to the movies. Have a good fight, entertain us! [ + quote]
EricCarr (Junior Member) 4 June 2006 1:50
THE PIRATEBAY IS BACK ONLINE! Piratebay 1 MPAA 0 [ + quote]
retcarahc (Newbie) 4 June 2006 16:48
From a post at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chechnya-sl/message/48497 www.kavkazcenter.com is hard to access just now. The reason is that we lost our Swedish server again ...... as a part of the raid against file sharing pirate site Pirate Bay. The police wasn't very careful or skilful - they confiscated several servers belonging to companies and societies without any connection to pirate activities. Altogether 50 policemen took part in the action yesterday. That number, sorry to say, seems to outnumber the amount of Swedishes policemen with even basic IT skills. The prosecutor has promised to return our server as soon as he can identify it, probably tomorrow. Just now the site is operating from one mirror site. The activity of news agency Kavkaz-Center has today so-called constitutional protection under the Constitutional Law of Freedom of Expression. This means that only the Chancellor of Justice has right to start prosecution or other activities towards the site. Also, there is a complete security for co-operators and messengers. Nobody, under no circumstances, has the right to investigate or try to find out information about co-operators, or to accuse or start pretrial investigations against any co-operator. This stronger juridical position seems to be the main outcome of abuse against the site initiated recently by the Russian Embassy in Stockholm. The Russian Ambassador in Sweden, Alexander Kadakin, asked in January the Prosecutor General to "enter actions for the final stopping of the web site [Kavkaz-Center]". We think the actions by the prosecutor in early May were illegal, and we have stepped into legal actions against him. The prosecutor stole two of our servers, and he hasn't returned them yet. This caused us a stop of operations in two days, before new equipment was up and running, still in Stockholm. [ + quote]
cdd1234 (Inactive) 14 June 2006 2:19
All those companies should sue the asses off of the MPAA & IFPI for that ... Period !!! [ + quote]