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| Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Requests Pardon Posted: 11 May 2012 01:30 AM PDT
For one, businessman Carl Lundström, the road ahead is certain. His sentence will be served electronically tagged in a Stockholm apartment. For three others – Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neik – questions remain. Peter Sunde was scheduled to begin his 8 month jail sentence in the Västervik Norra facility Wednesday, but at least for now that won’t be going ahead. Sunde has filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns and fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr. “The idea for the company came from Peter himself, and he has a tremendous commitment to it,” Sunde’s representative writes in the request filed with the Department of Justice. It is the recognizable name and reputation of the 33-year-old, the plea continues, that has enabled Flattr to gain traction in the market, a personal presence the company will need to maintain in order to continue moving forward. “Peter’s name and reputation in the industry will open many doors. The company has received a substantial amount of risk capital which has mostly been used to develop the product. After about two years development, the product is now basically ready to begin shipping to partners and large sites. A prerequisite for further development is that Peter is left on the company,” the plea concludes. Sunde adds that if the authorities can’t see their way to a full pardon, a delay before he has to serve his sentence would be the next best thing. The specific nature of his health concerns have not been detailed publicly. Site co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was previously ordered to spend 1 year in Mariefred prison roughly 65 km from Stockholm. His sentence was due to begin January 2nd 2012 but he became untraceable. A new deadline of April 18th was set for Svartholm to hand himself in but that date came and went with no further news. In addition to prison sentences there is also the outstanding issues of damages. Recently it was revealed that the compensation amount the Pirate Bay founders are required to hand over to the movie and recording company plaintiffs has been growing steadily. Due to interest being added since May 2006, as of February 2012 the amount owed had jumped from roughly $6.9 million dollars to nearly $11 million. Source: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Requests Pardon
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| Court Forbids Linking to Pirate Bay Proxies Posted: 10 May 2012 06:19 AM PDT
In an attempt to take these proxies offline the Hollywood funded anti-piracy group BREIN obtained an injunction against one of the sites and used this to convince others to shut down as well. The list of secondary targets included the local Pirate Party, who initially refused to give in to the demands but were later ordered to take their reverse proxy offline by the court. The Pirate Party claimed that the case against them amounted to a restriction of their freedom of speech, and sued BREIN over the order. Today the Court of The Hague delivered its verdict, which confirms most of the earlier injunction. The Pirate Party is now forbidden from encouraging the public to circumvent the Pirate Bay blockade and from listing or hosting tools that can enable others to do so. The Court specifically ruled that the Party’s reverse proxy has to remain offline. It was further ordered that Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses have to be filtered from the Pirate Party’s generic proxy. In addition the Pirate Party can’t link to other websites that allow the public to bypass the blockade. These orders are only valid when paired with an encouragement to circumvent. Should the Pirate Party fail to comply with the Court’s ruling it faces fines of €5,000 per day to a maximum penalty of €250,000. “For many who where hoping for the law to come to the rescue of basic civil liberties, today must be a rough awakening,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak in a comment. “This ridiculously broad verdict allows BREIN to take down any site that is posting information that displeases their censors.” “A first in Dutch law is that a judge has now also ordered a generic proxy to filter internet traffic as well. BREIN has created jurisprudence that will now allow them to come after any open proxy they have set their sights on.” Pirate Bay proxies are a hot topic, and not just in the Netherlands. Last week the UK High Court also ordered local ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay website. As a result the proxy site of the UK Pirate Party became overloaded with visitors. Whether BREIN’s equivalent in the UK will act against this and other proxies is unknown. The ruling against the Dutch Pirate Party is the second today regarding The Pirate Bay. This morning the Court of The Hague ordered five more Dutch Internet providers to censor the torrent site. This means that pretty much all Dutch Internet users are now affected by the blockade. The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, continues to share alternative means for blocked users to access the site. At the same time, the press attention is resulting in millions of extra visitors for the notorious BitTorrent site. Source: Court Forbids Linking to Pirate Bay Proxies
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After a drawn-out process beginning with the police raids on The Pirate Bay in 2006, a trial and guilty verdicts in 2009, and subsequent appeals since, the time has now arrived for the founders of the site to serve their sentences.
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