Pirate Bay Operators Charged - Site Still Up and Running
The four operators of Pirate Bay, one of the biggest file-sharing Web sites, have been officially charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden. Despite the charges against the site operators Pirate Bay is still operating.
The charges stem from a 2006 raid of Pirate Bay which included the confiscation of servers. Pirate Bay operators have maintained the charges are "idiotic." Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told the Reuters news agency, "There is no legal ground (for the charges)."
Pirate Bay doesn't host copyright protected files, rather it helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files by matching file seekers with PCs that host the files with what are called turrents. The site is free to use, however it does earn revenue through advertising, which is considered commercially exploiting copyright-protected work, according to Swedish prosecutors.
Pirate Bay has consistently and defiantly refused to shut its site down. Despite the legal troubles, the site is still going strong with new torrents being uploaded for sharing every minute. On a page that contains links to all of the legal threats slapped against The Pirate Bay, the site is quick to point out that "0 torrents has been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed."
This comes immediately after a recent "Celeb-ration!" by Pirate Bay celebrating tracking over 1 million torrents, have 10 million simultaneous peers sharing files and 2.5 million registered users.
The charges being faced could land the foursome in jail for a maximum of two years. The charges may be a chink in the armor of Pirate Bay, but something tells me these guys won't go down easily - nor will the site.
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I dont see them laying down and going out easy.they are most likley smarter than the people chaseing them.
A rather tongue-in-cheek mash-up of Google and Torrent sharing websites at PiraBoogle.com
Thought it rather fun to showcase a really easy-to-use Torrent file search engine using Google's own tools given all the recent coverage about PirateBay.org being sued and Yahoo removing PirateBay from its search results.
Judging by the 2,000 users who have accessed PiraBoogle on its first day they agree that it is a great interface to use (wonder if they get the irony that it is built on Google)?
As I watch the turn of events from Pirate Bay, I am amazed - to say - what lengths people will go to. Look folks, If I found a set of car keys "Can I be arrested for Grand Theft Auto?", If I was matched up with someone on a match finder site, And the match injured me, can I sue the Site? I have sat back and watched as thousands of people go to jail for using Controlled Drugs, However the Seller goes free? Does anyone but me see a pattern here? Its no longer about right or wrong, Its all about Money and revenue.
Pirate Bay moved their database to another Country (Yea, They have passports too). Sometimes I wonder if they really know who they are dealing with.