It’s been pretty hot in Stockholm… although not from the weather averaging at around minus 5 degrees for the last week or so 😉
Of course I’m referring to Pirate Bay. There has been a whole load of demonstrations outside of the Stockholm courthouse this week concerning this case. The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 and quickly established itself as the world’s most high profile file-sharing website. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users. Read detailed report (Swedish).
There are four men that run this service who had been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden. The Pirate Bay’s servers themselves do not store copyrighted material but offer links to the download location of films, TV programmes, albums and software. The Pirate Bay’s founders are often referred to by the users as merely libertine librarians, because they only provide a directory of copyrighted material and do not host the files themselves.
On Tuesday this week half of the charges levelled at the founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site have been dropped relating to “assisting copyright infringement” leaving the lesser charges of “assisting making available copyright material” on trial day two.
Now’s just waiting for part 2 😉