Dave Horvath
1 Jun 2006 9:55
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. PiratByrån 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". PiratByrån'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