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The Pirate Bay Celebrates Its 20th AnniversaryErnesto Van der Sar, 19 Sep 12:39 PM During the summer of 2003, Swedish pro-culture organization Pirat

The Pirate Bay Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary Ernesto Van der Sar, 19 Sep 12:39 PM During the summer of 2003, Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån was making a name for itself; sharing news and educating people on how they could share media online. What the group's members didn't realize at the time, is that the plans they made would create a ripple effect that still has an impact decades later. Like many other people mesmerized by the unbridled ability to share files over the Internet, the new BitTorrent protocol caught Piratbyrån's eye. From one thing came another, and Piratbyrån decided to start their own tracker. A Swedish Torrent Tracker When this idea was first brought up isn't clear, not even to the site's founders, but at the end of 2003 The Pirate Bay was presented to the public. "We have opened a BitTorrent tracker – The Pirate Bay. From there, you can download and share games, movies, discs, TV shows and more," the short announcement reads, translated from Swedish. A New Torrent Tracker One of the group's unwritten goals was to offer a counterweight to the propaganda being spread by local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyrån. The pro-culture group saw sharing as something positive instead, and a file-sharing website would surely bring this point across. The Pirate Bay first came online in Mexico where Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time. After a few months, the site moved to Sweden where it was hosted on a Pentium III 1GHz laptop with 256MB RAM. This one machine, which belonged to Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, kept the site online and included a fully operational tracker. The Pirate Bay server Piratbyrån initially planned to create the first public file-sharing network in Sweden but, in the years that followed, the site grew out to become a global file-sharing icon. While The Pirate Bay team was proud of this success, it was not without consequences. Initially, various takedown messages from copyright holders were met with mocking responses, but the legal pressure became a heavy burden. Behind the scenes, the US Government applied pressure on Sweden, urging the country do something about the taunting pirate site. At the same time, the site's founders noticed that they were being shadowed by private investigators, who smelled blood. The Raid The pressure eventually reached its first peak when The Pirate Bay's infrastructure was raided. May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The policemen had instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay's servers, and that's exactly what they did. Footage from The Pirate Bay raid For most pirate sites the road would end there, but The Pirate Bay was no ordinary site, and it wasn't planning to cave in just yet. Shortly before the raid began, Gottfrid noticed some unusual activity. He warned Fredrik who, as a precaution, decided to make a backup. This turned out to be a pivotal moment in the site's history. Because of this backup, Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days. Instead of hiding in the shadows, Pirate Bay's spokesperson Peter Sunde, aka Brokep, told the world that The Pirate Bay wasn't going anywhere. This swift and defiant comeback turned the site's founders into heroes for many. The site made headline news around the world and in Stockholm, people were waving pirate flags in the streets, a sentiment that benefited the newly founded Pirate Party as well. The Turning Point There was also a major downside, however. The raid was the start of a criminal investigation, which led to a spectacular trial, and prison sentences for several of the site's founders. Pirate Bay supporters at the first day in Court This became another turning point. Many of the early Piratbyrån members cut their ties with the site. Gottfrid, Fredrik and Peter also left the ship, which was handed over to a more anonymous group ostensibly located in the Seychelles. The outspokenness of the early years eventually gave way to the silent treatment. While the site's moderators are easy to reach nowadays, the people (Winston) who pull the strings at the top remain behind the scenes at all times. This was made quite obvious when the site disappeared for weeks following another raid at a Stockholm datacenter in 2014. At the time, even the site's staffers had no idea what was going on. The Pirate Bay eventually recovered from this second raid too, but by then something had clearly changed. The torrent site now seems content with just being there. Over the years the site simplified its setup by removing the tracker, introducing magnet links, and further decentralizing its setup. The ability to comment was also sacrificed at some point, and user registrations were closed for years, although there's some progress on that front now. The Mods and Admins Today's manual user registrations are processed by a dedicated moderator team, which also ensures that the site remains free of spam and malware. This team of volunteers is separate from the site's 'operator' and many have been in that role for over a decade. Earlier today, Pirate Bay admin Spud17 posted a message in the Pirate Bay forum to celebrate the 20th anniversary. "Most of the current TPB Crew have been here for well over 10 years, many for much, much longer, and we're proud to be associated with the world's most iconic torrent site," she notes. "We volunteer our time freely to help keep the site clean, nuking the fakes and malware to kingdom come, and help edit/move/delete torrents as and when uploaders request help in the forum's Account Issues subforum." Crypto Miner and Token After two decades, TPB still manages to make headlines on occasion. For example, when yet another country orders Internet providers to block the site, or when it suddenly decides to 'deploy' its users to mine cryptocurrency. The last major project was announced in 2021 when The Pirate Bay released its very own 'crypto' token out of the blue. There was no official whitepaper for these PirateTokens, but the torrent site envisioned the 'coin' being used to access VIP content or donate to uploaders. These plans never came to fruition and the token price soon entered a freefall. After a few months, the official token announcement disappeared from the site as well, leaving token holders with worthless digital memorabilia. The Pirate Bay itself isn't going anywhere it seems. The events listed above are really just a fraction of events spanning 20 extraordinary years. The question now is whether the site will survive until its 25th anniversary. — Note: The 20-year anniversary logo was created by theSEMAR. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Trump Doesn't Deserve Copyright Win Over Eddie Grant But Still Might Get One Andy Maxwell, 18 Sep 10:08 PM Former President Trump is one of the most interesting characters to ever appear on the American political landscape. Trump's ability to attract and generate controversy will go down in history, as will his numerous appearances in copyright infringement lawsuits. Musician Eddy Grant filed a complaint against Trump in 2020 and three years later there's little positivity to report for anyone involved. Ignorance and Emotion Fuel Fire The background to the lawsuit can be summarized as follows: during the presidential election campaign, someone affiliated with Trump and his campaign posted this animation on Twitter depicting a struggling Joe Biden. The Trump campaign's decision to include the 1982 hit 'Electric Avenue' as background music infuriated Eddy Grant, the British singer-songwriter behind the track. While his song being used without permission provided Grant with a legal avenue for retaliation, court filings made it clear that Grant was deeply offended that his music was being used to promote Trump's campaign. A confident Trump recently claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. That sits in stark contrast to the record in this case which currently consists of 108 filings spanning over 36 months. Three Years of Toxic Waste While Grant is a principled man, he doesn't come off as unreasonable. A short phone call from Trump, freshly enlightened after 10 minutes on Wikipedia learning about the Brixton Riots, what caused them, and why the use of Electric Avenue was never meant to offend, couldn't have hurt. Bridges can always be built towards common ground; the parties' shared appreciation of Chuck Berry, for example, or how Grant survived a heart attack in 1971 and may be willing to share some tips. Instead, Trump rejected Grant's offer to settle the case. In a motion to dismiss, the soon-to-be most powerful man in the world, rich beyond most people's imaginations, told Grant he would get nothing for his involuntary contribution to the presidential campaign. Because Grant had created the track for entertainment purposes and Trump had used it for political commentary, that was a "fundamentally different and new purpose" and covered by the doctrine of fair use. Use Was Not Fair In October 2021, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl said each of the fair use factors weighed in favor of Grant. The Trump campaign's use of Electric Avenue was little more than "wholesale copying" and it had no license or permission in place to render that legal. However, in a move that validated calls for justice and social equality found in many of Grant's songs, Trump's legal team reminded the musician that some people remain more equal than others. "Plaintiffs' claims against Donald J. Trump are barred, either in whole or in part, by Presidential absolute immunity." What was said during the subsequent deposition of Donald Trump is not part of the public record but the fact that a deposition took place at all is both remarkable and by now, fittingly depressing. Grant's Motion for Summary Judgment On September 15, 2023, the plaintiffs and defendants filed motions for summary judgment at a Manhattan federal court in an effort to avoid the case going to trial. Grant's motion states that despite the earlier rejection of a fair use defense, Trump's team remain undeterred. "Defendants will rely on the affirmative defense of fair use, which the Court rejected at the pleading stage. Discovery has revealed unequivocally that Defendants' use of the Works was not transformative and does not comport with any theory of the fair use doctrine," the motion reads. "The defense, which Defendants have the burden of proving, should be rejected again as a matter of law and Plaintiffs' motion that Defendants committed copyright infringement should be granted in its entirety." For reasons that are not immediately obvious, large sections of the motion are redacted, especially those relating to the deposition of Dan Scavino, Trump's social media advisor. In summary, Grant believes he's on solid ground and $300,000 in potential damages can't be nullified by a defense of fair use. Trump's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment The motion from the defense opens with the plaintiff's assertion that the animation in question, provided to the Trump team by a third party, infringed two copyrights; a sound recording and composition in the Electric Avenue backing music. But then the following: "There can be no material dispute, however, that Plaintiffs only plead a copyright registration covering the composition (i.e., the written music and lyrics) of Electric Avenue, registered at around the time of its publication in 1983," the motion reads. "Plaintiffs nevertheless claim that they own a valid copyright registration covering the sound recording (i.e., the fixation of a series of musical and spoken sounds to a 'phonorecord') of Electric Avenue by virtue a copyright registration for a 'greatest hits' album (which they described to the Copyright Office as a 'compilation') that contains the song Electric Avenue." To put things mildly, that isn't ideal for Grant. As the plaintiffs explain, the Copyright Office's position on compilations is that registrations do not cover their constituent parts, unless they were unpublished at the time of registration. "Because Electric Avenue was indisputably published long before the registration that Plaintiffs assert covers its sound recording, Plaintiffs failed to plead and produce a valid copyright registration for the sound recording of Electric Avenue. "Therefore, their claim for infringement of the Electric Avenue sound recording (Count II of their Complaint) must be summarily dismissed, as it is axiomatic that Plaintiff own and plead a valid copyright registration covering the alleged infringed work is a prerequisite for maintenance of a federal copyright infringement action," the motion adds. With no valid copyright registration covering the sound recording, Count II of the complaint must be dismissed, Trump's legal team conclude. Lawsuit Hurts All On the basis that fair use is a legal defense, not immunity from legal action, the Trump team's actions represent yet another chilling effect on those who rely on fair use to conduct research, teach, learn or report on current events. The message here is that if a third party is wealthy and stubborn, a fair use defense that has no realistic chance of success can be dragged out for years until the rightsholder runs out of money, or indeed the will to carry on. In this case, a fundamental administrative issue could mean that the court has no other choice than to side with those who benefited from a copyright work, refused to pay for that right, and then prevailed through sheer financial staying power and pure luck. That fair use was the vehicle adds insult to injury. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Are you looking for a VPN service? TorrentFreak sponsor NordVPN has some excellent offers. ©2023 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company