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Recording Industry Wants Millions From Pirate Bay

By Mikael Ricknäs

March 31, 2008 — IDG News Service —

The recording industry wants €1.6 million (US$2.5 million) in damages for copyright infringement from the people behind The Pirate Bay, according to a claim filed Monday by industry organization IFPI.

Pirate Bay is one of the most widely used BitTorrent trackers for music, movies and software.

In January, Swedish prosecutor Håkan Roswall filed charges against four people mentioned by IFPI, for involvement in running Pirate Bay, and 34 counts of copyright infringement. The Swedish government specified €120,000 in damages.

Deciding the amount of damages is a big sticking point. IFPI has, for example looked at the number of downloads, and whether an album had been released by the time it was made available for download via Pirate Bay.

"It has been very difficult, but in the end it will be up to the court to decide," said IFPI Managing Director Lars Gustafsson.

When contacted by IDG Enterprise Service, the reaction from Peter Sunde, one of the people mentioned in the suit, was "Ouch." But when hearing how IFPI has calculated the damages he had more to say.

"It is completely wrong, as usual. I don't know where to start," he said.

His complaints include criticism of the idea that every download should count as a buy. It's also not certain whether someone in Sweden downloaded a particular file or not, he added. If someone downloaded a file from Germany, German law would apply.

Sunde added that news of the IFPI suit also means he lost an internal betting pool: his guess about what IFPI would claim was €3 million.

IFPI is on the offensive; last week Gustafsson also dropped hints, in an interview with Swedish paper Sydsvenskan, about a suit directed against Swedish ISPs (Internet service providers), to get them to block Pirate Bay.

The paper has also published a study saying that two out of five Swedish musicians want file sharing to become legal. The study is based on interviews with 100 musicians.

Demands from various industry organizations won't end with IFPI's suit. The Motion Picture Association and Antipiratbyrån -- an organization that represents Swedish producers and distributors of movies and games -- are expected to sue for similar amounts in the near future.

The investigation of Pirate Bay started almost two years ago, when police raided Web hosting company PRQ.

The trial will start no earlier than the third quarter.

 

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