Pirate Bay file-sharing defended

Found on BBC News on Sunday, 15 February 2009
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The Pirate Bay is the world's most high-profile file-sharing site and is being taken to court by media firms including Sony and Warner Bros.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm have portrayed themselves as digital libertarians and say that they cannot be prosecuted for copyright theft because none of the content is hosted on their computer servers.

"It is legal to offer a service that can be used in both a legal and illegal way, according to Swedish law," Mr Samuelsson said at the opening of the trial, which is expected to last three weeks.

If Sweden should rule that TPB is illegal, then they may as well shut down Google since you can use it to look up information about terrorism, bomb-building and the always mentioned child pornography. Oh, and you can find copyrighted music and video via Google too. Let's see the content industry getting smacked on both cheeks. They have annoyed their customers (and everybody else) for long enough now. It's about time for them to adjust their business model; or go down. Personally, I hope for the latter.