The Pirate Bay Moves to Egyptian Desert Island
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-moving-080401/Written by Ben Jones on April 01, 2008
As part of their efforts to fight against ever increasing restrictions regarding intellectual property in Sweden, the Pirate Bay has moved from their long-time home in Sweden for pastures new.
Their new residence is the rolling dunes of the Sinai. In a blog posting they explain the move “Due to the new copyright legislation that are going to take effect from today we had to move all of the system outside of Europe.”
“We decided to move to the desert of Sinai in Egypt since we feel that we’ll be safe there.” Connectivity in Egypt should be uncongested, with only about 1 in 13 of the population regular net users, despite modern infrastructure investments by Telecom Egypt. Meanwhile, the sun should do wonders to counter the typical pasty-faced stereotype of the typical computer addict.
In other news, there’s egg on the face of ABC, as a pre-air episode of the popular TV-show “Lost” hit the net. Apparently, the episode is from a DVD screener, and proves, yet again, that the problems come from members of the industry, who are often claimed to be the victims.
There is more breaking news today, as the popular OiNK replacement Waffles.fm now accepts new members. For months thousands of users have waited to get an account at the popular private BitTorrent tracker, and today this may become reality.
Unfortunately, things have not been so rosy for all BitTorrent sites. BT-chat, a popular torrent site has closed it’s torrent operations, to concentrate on its Bluetooth based IM client.
BT-Chat owner NBtX told TorrentFreak “ Server costs we’re starting to get too much, and the ads were making everyone mad. We have since then decided to stop providing torrents, and focus solely on the Bluetooth instant messaging program.”
However, the worst news comes for users of the private BitTorrent tracker BitHQ. Like EliteTorrents before them, they have been raided and shut down by US Federal Officers. No comment from any party involved has been forthcoming so far.
AND...........
IFPI Demands Millions From The Pirate Bay
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-demands-millions-080331/IFPI Demands Millions From The Pirate Bay
Written by Ernesto on March 31, 2008
The IFPI has announced that it demands $2.5 million from the Pirate Bay in the upcoming court case, to cover the damages they suffered from 24 music albums that were made available on the popular BitTorrent tracker.
pirate bayPirate Bay’s Brokep was not impressed by the claims from IFPI and said: “I thought April fools day was tomorrow. We should send IFPI an invoice instead. All studies show that downloading generates more revenue when it comes to music. Downloaders also consume music in other ways and generate more revenue in total.”
The $2.5 million IFPI asks for, represent the lost revenue for every download. Interesting detail, all the (leaked) albums that were shared before they were available in stores are counted twice. They could have quadrupled it if they wanted to, the damages are not based on research anyway.
This January, prosecutor Håkan Roswall had already asked the court for a $188,000 fine for four individuals - Fredrik Neij (”TiAMO”), Gottfrid Svartholm (”Anakata”), Peter Sunde (”Brokep”) and businessman Carl Lundström. The MPA and Antipiratbyrån, the other two parties involved in the case are expected to file damages later.
The legal investigation into the Pirate Bay started almost two years ago, after the controversial raid on the Pirate Bay in May 2006. At the time the Swedish police confiscated 180 servers, most of which had nothing to do with the BitTorrent tracker. Last December the investigation finally came to an end, resulting in 4,000 pages of legal paperwork.
It will probably take a while before the case actually goes to court. Anita Thimberg from the Stockholm district court has said earlier that the case is likely to be delayed until after the summer due to its “complexity”.
Stay Tuned!
