Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Pirate Bay Trial Day Two

The trial against popular torrent site The Pirate Bay is in full swing with day two holding some interesting changes. The charges of production of copyrighted material have been dropped to focus solely on "making available".

Pirate's founders arrived in court on Monday amidst a huge spectacle which included the pirate bus, Pirate Bay supports totting mega phones and a flood of Tweeting from the court room. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström are all charged with facilitating illegal downloads of copyrighted material, charges which they plead not guilty to. That was day one of the long standing fight between The Pirate Bay and the Swedish government.

On day two prosecutor Hakan Roswall arrived in court and amended the original charges. According to the Swedish newspaper The Local Roswall asked the courts to dismiss "complicity in the production of copyrighted material" from the charges. The remaining charge against the four defendants is "complicity to make (copyrighted material) available."

Roswall has confirmed that he now plans to limit the charges to the production of the actual torrent file and not the resultant hard or soft copy. The new charges will be amended to read "complicity to make (copyrighted material) available".

Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies in the case, said the change would simplify the charges against The Pirate Bay.

“It’s a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. In fact it simplifies the prosecutor’s case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works,” he said in a statement.

For more coverage on The Pirate Bay Trial checkout:

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