TorrentFreak Email Update |
| Pirate Bay Founder Fined For ‘Continued Involvement’ In The Site Posted: 27 Jun 2012 02:21 AM PDT
The founders of the site were hit with jail sentences and huge fines following a 2009 trial and subsequent appeals, and the site itself is banned or censored in growing numbers of countries around the world. What is less well known perhaps is that two of the site’s founders are actually forbidden from having anything at all to do with running The Pirate Bay. The legal restrictions date back to an order issued by the Stockholm District Court, which declared that Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) and Gottfrid Svatholm (Anakata) were forever banned from operating the site. Breaching the ban would result in a hefty fine for the duo, but one was not expected to be handed down – until today. The Stockholm District Court now says that Neij has continued to have involvement in the operations of The Pirate Bay. As a result it has handed down a 500,000 kronor fine ($70,690).
“There is no evidence, just the lack of evidence that I was not involved,” he told us. “In civil cases it’s guilty until proven innocent and in a previous case I declined to give the details who I transfered the site to. They say if it’s not me, then I could easily say who it is.” Although the amount levied by the District Court is significant, Neij appears unfazed. “I don’t mind civil cases,” he told us. “I don’t live in Sweden, and it’s not like an extra $71,000 would hurt the $10,606,000 I already owe.” Along with the other founders of The Pirate Bay, Neij does indeed owe millions of dollars in damages and fines so his predicament and attitude is perhaps best summed up by paraphrasing the earlier words of fellow site founder Peter Sunde. “Why stay at just a few million dollars?” Sunde said. “Why not make it a billion dollars instead?” In any event, it appears that no one is getting any money. Fredrik tells TorrentFreak that he’s already written to the court informing them of his intention never to pay any fines, now or in the future. Even if he did, however, there would be a bonus. “[Any payment] would push the mafiaa from The Pirate Bay trial one step away from even getting any cash at all, as all this goes directly to the state, and stuff owed to the state will be taken before anything is sent to private cash I owe. “Not that they will ever get any cash for either of the debts, but still.” Source: Pirate Bay Founder Fined For ‘Continued Involvement’ In The Site
|
| Dropbox Bans BitTorrent Startup Boxopus Over Piracy Concerns Posted: 26 Jun 2012 07:05 AM PDT
The news was quickly picked up by many other technology sites and as a result the service’s member count surged to more than 50,000. Boxopus didn’t go unnoticed by the people at Dropbox either. However, where most reviews heralded the usefulness of the service, Dropbox sees it as a threat. Although Boxopus is a neutral technology, BitTorrent’s piracy stigma is something Dropbox wants to stay far away from. Apparently, the company believes that a ‘perceived’ link to piracy is enough to ban Boxopus from accessing its API. A few hours ago the Boxopus team received the following email from one of Dropbox’s engineers (emphasis added): “It's come to our attention that latest Boxopus features could be perceived as encouraging users to violate copyright using Dropbox.” “Violating copyright is against our terms of service, so we are terminating your app's API access. Once your access is revoked, any API calls your app makes will fail.” Shortly after this email the API access was pulled, effectively killing the Boxopus service. To the developers the news came as a shock. Not only was Boxopus adhering to all DMCA requirements, Dropbox also explicitly approved an alpha version of Boxopus weeks earlier. At the time no alarm bells went off, so the developers continued investing in the product. “Once the alpha version was approved we were pretty sure that Dropbox was okay with it, so we put our efforts into optimizing the service. It took us 3 months to finish the product with a team of 5 people, which was a $30,000 USD investment,” Boxopus founder Alex tells TorrentFreak. But now, just a few days after the service had its breakthrough online, the service is dead. Aside from the massive financial loss, the Boxopus team is also disappointed by the way innovation has been stifled by Dropbox due to a perceived threat that may not even be justified. “This behavior makes it hard to believe that developers are treated fairly and innovation is welcomed at Dropbox. It seems like legit and pre-approved applications may be blocked simply by someone’s will although they act within the scope of company’s terms and international laws,” Alex says. The Boxopus developers are not blind to the fact that people use BitTorrent to share copyrighted files, but that was in no way what their service was designed for. “Many people see BitTorrent as a synonym of piracy, however, a lot of interesting legal stuff can be found in BitTorrent networks and this is what Boxopus is made for.” Nevertheless, Dropbox has made up its mind and a BitTorrent download service is not allowed. To save what’s left the Boxopus team is now negotiating with other cloud storage services to continue their business with a more tolerant partner. Source: Dropbox Bans BitTorrent Startup Boxopus Over Piracy Concerns
|
Over the years the laundry list of punishments and measures against The Pirate Bay and its founders has grown to epic proportions.
So what evidence does the Court have exactly? TorrentFreak tracked Fredrik down and asked.
On Saturday | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment