Half of the charges levelled at the founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site have been dropped.
Swedish prosecutors dropped charges relating to "assisting copyright infringement" leaving the lesser charges of "assisting making available copyright material" on trial day two. Pirate Bay co-founder Frederik Neik said it showed prosecutors had misunderstood the technology. The music industry played down the changes as "simplifying the charges". Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies in the case, said: "It's a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. "In fact it simplifies the prosecutor's case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works." The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 and quickly established itself as the world's most high profile file-sharing website. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users. At the start of the trial in Stockholm, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm were facing a large fine and up to two years in prison, if convicted. "This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday," defence lawyer Per E Samuelson told the TorrentFreak website, which reports on developments in the BitTorrent file-sharing community. BitTorrent is a legal application used by many file-shares to swap content because of the fast and efficient manner it distributes files. No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users computers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7895026.stm -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
