The recent arrest of Peter Sunde, a co-founder of the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has brought back to light the issues surrounding copyright piracy on the Internet. Sunde had been on the run for more than two years, while another founder, Fredrik Nejj, is still a fugitive. The three co-founders and their sponsor were sentenced back in 2009 on charges of copyright infringement, but there is still debate on whether or not their actions should actually be illegal.
The site was originally founded by members of the Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, or The Pirate Bureau, an organization devoted to the promotion of copyright freedom within the Swedish government, and a counterpoint to powerful lobbyists such as the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. In Sweden, their movement is highly respected, and has even spawned a political party, The Pirate Party, which has since been mirrored in a number of countries around the world, including the UK.
Since the foundation of The Pirate Bay, there has been a ruthless campaign to shut it down, a campaign which has not always stayed within the bounds of the law. In 2007, an anonymous hacker leaked emails from anti-piracy company MediaDefender discussing the hiring of hackers to attack users of The Pirate Bay. In response, the site filed charges against clients of MediaDefender including the Swedish branches of Twentieth Century Fox, EMI, Universal Music Group, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Atari, Activision, Ubisoft and Sony. Whilst these charges were not pursued, this case highlights the strength of opposition to the anti-copyright movement.
Accusations of corruption, bribery and bias have dogged the footsteps of The Pirate Bay’s enemies. For example, police investigator Jim Keyzer, accused by Sunde of a conflict of interest when he declined to investigate MediaDefender, later accepted a job at Warner Brothers, a client of MediaDefender.
In 2009, a guilty verdict was returned against The Pirate Bay’s founders, and the legal battle against the site was stepped up a level. Numerous countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, have blocked access to the website, while some ISPs such as Virgin Media have taken matters into their own hands and even blocked numerous proxy websites, used by file-sharers to circumvent the original blocks.
The high profile of The Pirate Bay’s enemies has had a large impact on the response of governments to it. The power of Hollywood around the world and the political impact of big business has meant that the anti-copyright debate has been suppressed at every level, with even Piratbyrån, the seemingly harmless, award-winning think tank, being subject to a police raid in 2006.
Greedy corporations, such as those which hire the likes of MediaDefender or the even more sinister-sounding Rights Alliance to defend their copyright issues, should not be allowed so much power.
Interestingly, the debate has been changed recently through an unlikely source: Game of Thrones. Due to the fact that it’s actually pretty difficult to watch the show legally unless you live in America and have access to HBO, the show has been setting record after record for illegal downloads. The finale of season 4 was downloaded 1.5 million times in the first 12 hours, with 250,000 users sharing the same file.
However, it seems HBO doesn’t care.
Despite Time Warner’s involvement in putting legal pressure on The Pirate Bay, CEO Jeff Bewkes told Forbes magazine that they had been dealing with piracy in the form of people connecting wires in apartment buildings and stealing cable for years, and they had found it led to greater publicity and therefore more paying subscribers.
It also seems clear that the war on piracy cannot be won. Despite numerous attempts to block The Pirate Bay, it still enjoys widespread usage all over the world, thanks to proxy sites and other mechanisms used to bypass government blocks. This shows that there is a strong desire by many people for less stringent copyright laws, and a consideration of the legitimacy of file-sharing.
However, as recently as January 2014, the UK Prime Minister’s IP advisor, Mike Weatherly MP, told the House that there needs to be “some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders”. He even advocated the imprisonment of people who only use file-sharing for their own entertainment.
The relentless attempts by big business to stifle free speech and freedom of expression on the Internet show a wilful disrespect for basic rights and an overwhelming desire to make money above all else. While a complete dismantling of the concept of copyright seems overly extreme, there must be some middle ground whereby men like Peter Sunde aren’t locked up for founding websites which don’t even host any content.
The creative industries need to recognize that it is their responsibility to change their businesses to adapt to the new technological landscape, and not to use their political influence to prevent development and criminalize pioneers.
