Archive for the ‘Gottfrid Svatholm’ tag
Pirate Bay founder and BREIN head Meet Face to Face
Gottfrid Svarholm, founder of the Pirate Bay came across Tim Kuik, the head of the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN recently. The two encountered each other at Random, a hacker conference that takes place in the Netherlands. It was a few mere months ago that BREIN took the Pirate Bay founder to court to have the site shut down; BREIN won the civil case.
Currently, the verdict on the case has been put on hold, which is allowing the three defendants of the Pirate Bay to appeal the verdict. The meeting between Svarhalm and Kuik occurred during a panel discussion on copyright laws and the future of media distribution at the conference. Although Svarholm was in the audience, he took the opportunity to address Kuik.
Asking Kuik, “Can you please tell me where that profit is, because I’d like some of it,” which included an overwhelming applause from the audience. Swarholm wanted to know if there was evidentiary support that the Pirate Bay is making money from distributed copyright works.
Kuik replied, “You tell me, you’re here, somebody paid for your trip,” implying that the revenue from the Pirate Bay had paid for his trip to The Netherlands. Swartholm, who is currently working as a software programmer in Asia said, “I paid for this trip by developing computer software for my customers,” again with cheers from the audience.
Kuik’s ultimate rebuttal went on to back up the fact that a Swedish investigative journalist earned hundreds of thousands of kroner in one year due to advertisements, however, this may not even be enough money to cover the hardware and bandwidth costs.
Pirate Bay still Struggling on the Legal Front
Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neg and Gottfrid Svatholm are being sued by the lawyers from Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI) and Federation against Music Piracy (FPM) in Italy. The organizations are seeking damages of over 1 million euro. Nevertheless, the lawyer of the three has explained that there has been no official notification.
After the fallout between of the planned sale to Global Gaming Factory, this lawsuit is the last thing the Pirate Bay was looking to become involved with; along with the loss of a Dutch Court case. The Pirate Bay was then handed the ruling that fines would be imposed in the Netherlands if they did not disable the country’s access to the site within ten days.
In August 2008, the Pirate Bay was made inaccessible in Italy after internet service providers decided to block this domain; nevertheless, the Pirate Bay appealed and won the case. Then in October, the Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The current Italian lawsuit is being based on evidence which was collected during this Bergamo case.
The President of FIMI, Enzo Mazza, stated, “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”