good Three of the four principals behind Bittorrent site The Pirate Bay got their prison sentences cut to under a year – the fourth was ill and will be sentenced later.
bad While their sentences were cut, the monetary damages to be paid to various content providers were raised – from $4.2 million to roughly $6.6 million. source
» But really, the thing to take from this is … Despite the legal troubles the Swedish site has faced lately, it’s still up. Can we just offer them a hand for somehow keeping this site up despite all of the trouble they’ve been facing? That’s kind of amazing.
The Yes Men are being sued over this action, and see P2P as the best and only way this material will get seen. They’re calling for it to be copied as far and wide as possible …
A note from VODO • Regarding The Yes Men’s use of their Bittorrent distribution service to get their latest movie, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” out to the rest of the world. Why the need for Bittorrent? Because they pretended to be members of the Chamber of Commerce, as per their status as well-known culture jammers. And the lawsuit is creating legal headaches for them – which VODO will help them get around. source
The new song had a twisted journey online. “These Are My Twisted Words” leaked a few days ago on a torrent site with zero information to go with it, but with a sound that was VERY close to Radiohead. However, the band only confirmed they uploaded the track this morning. While they’re not the first band to use BitTorrent as a distribution mechanism (Harvey Danger comes to mind), they’re definitely the biggest. Kudos to Radiohead for being game for reaching audiences in new, interesting ways. source
Pirates aren’t popular these days, but let’s give them this—they know how to put together a killer on-demand entertainment system.
Farhad Manjoo • On the sad state of affairs for legal movie downloading. All Manjoo wants is the digital equivalent of Netflix, but the restrictions on movie download services are so high – either not enough of a selection or too many limitations – that he ends up just using Bittorrent instead. • source
We see this as a film. This is the first set-back for the heroes. … In the end we know that the good guys will win, as in all movies.
Peter Sunde • One of the defendants in the spectrial in Sweden. A guilty verdict was brought down today, but there still seems to be plenty of swagger in the steps of The Pirate Bay’s owners, who plan to appeal. The site is still up, by the way. • source
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.
Per E Samuelson • Defense lawyer in The Pirate Bay’s trial in Sweden. The Torrent tracker now only faces charges of “assisting making available copyright infringement,” as the prosecution could not prove the torrent files were specifically tied to The Pirate Bay. • source
The Spectrial site is kind of overloaded, but … … you can get updates through other sources, including Twitter. Anyway, Day One of the trial just ended, and it was a bit of a media circus in the morning, though it calmed down later in the day. Check out this site to see the latest on the trial of the century (well, it is if you’re a mad hax0r). source