Pirate Bay Operators Maneuver To Avoid Jail Time, Domain Seizure
Pirate Bay Operators Maneuver To Avoid Jail Time, Domain Seizure
Posted 02/01/2012 at 12:19pm
| by Brad Chacos
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By all accounts, 2012 hasn't been very nice to the torrent freaks over at Pirate Bay. Megaupload's takedown has them worried, and today, the Swedish Supreme Court ruled that Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström -- the original operators of the site -- will have to pay fines and serve jail time for copyright infringement. Is the ship going down? Nah -- the site says it has things in the bag.
As soon as they learned about the Swedish Supreme Court's decision, the group switched its domain from .org to the Swedish .se, TorrentFreak reports. The change is already in effect. Why? Because the U.S. government can seize .com, .net and .org domains. Someone from Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak they made the switch "just in case ICE has been waiting for the court case to be over." ICE is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and has been seizing domains of alleged copyright infringers left and right over the past couple of years.
But wait: why should the Pirate Bay's owners care? Aren't they about to be thrown in the clink? Not so fast, the Pirate Bay says in a blog post.
With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday.
So there you have it: the Pirate Bay just gave the middle finger to the governments of both the U.S. and Sweden. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
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warptek2010
February 03, 2012 at 12:42am
This government focus on seizing domains is just a waste of tax payer money and here is why... they could seize all the domains they want but most if not all of pirated software, movies and music, originates on USENET (the subspace of the internet) and unless the U.N. suddenly starts singing Kumbaya and shuts down Newsgroups and Premium Newsgroup providers of Usenet on a worldwide scale (quite an enormous undertaking) piracy isn't going away anytime soon. This just reminds of the governments war on drugs - get the picture?
zero_ken13
February 01, 2012 at 11:49pm
Nice moves TPB :) hahaha I hope they make a troll face while TPB gives them the middle finger. Now they will say, we've been trolled.... AGAIN... hahahaha
Nimrod
February 01, 2012 at 7:41pm
They will keep on avoiding the law right up to the point of a total government take over of the internet. For our own safety, of course.
If you dont think its going to happen then guess again. Its being edged in otherwise and the things they have done people already said would be impossible.
JohnP
February 01, 2012 at 5:56pm
AND they will be switching over to Magnet links which puts them one more step away from having anything on their site that they can be sued over or said to be illegal. Unless they can sue over a site having just text on the site, like putting SKYRIM in a text form like this without any real link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:12dffb5e2cb2819b9c95af08f7432e304fd436ac& (truncated and hopefully legal)
Now that will make it the devils own to enforce, especially since the entire contents of Pirate Bay would then fit on USB thumb drive.
Good luck with that...
Trekker1091
February 01, 2012 at 1:41pm
Lolz. No matter how bad it gets, the Pirate Bay guys always seem to find a way to get around it.
Bullwinkle J Moose
February 01, 2012 at 12:53pm
What it Takes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLCKSPFrkJQ
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