PIRATE
BOOTY
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
FREDRIK PERSSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm, center, and Peter Sundin, right, speak to members of the press on the eve of their 2009
trial in Stockholm, Sweden. Plaintiffs from movie, music and video game industries sued the site for nearly $11.9 million.
being violated. […] It is the opinion of
us and our lawyers that you are...morons,
and that you should please go sodomize
yourself with retractable batons.”
Clearly, the TPB boys weren’t ready
to fold simply because industry heavyweights had come out swinging.
“They are very outspoken about the
fact that they think what they’re doing
isn’t wrong, even though it violates U.S.
law. They feel that people should be able
to share files,” Ernesto Van Der Sar, cofounder of the blog TorrentFreak, says
of TPB. “That made them, if not heroes,
then at least vigilantes, to many people.”
As TPB continued to fend off music and
movie executives, the Swedish government began to listen more closely to the
industry’s concerns and targeting TPB —
setting in motion a legal battle in Sweden
that is still playing out today. Some of
the founders face jail time and hefty fines.
And the scrum enveloping TPB has
become a touchstone for a much broader
and divisive political debate pitting the
merits of copyright protection against
individual privacy and the open, freewheeling nature of the Internet.
Amid this debate, Hollywood and others with high stakes in the copyright
battle concede how difficult the web
makes it for them to protect their wares.
Like TPB’s crew, Robinson is unsparing
in how he assesses the opposition.
“It’s a lot more difficult to shut down