Introduction to The Piracy Bureau and The Pirate Bay

This blog entry will examine the Swedish internet sites the Piracy Bureau, The Pirate Bay and the Bit-torrent technogly used to share files. I decided to explore these sites in part because the founders are Swedish and the recent Pirate Bay trial and copyright issues are currently discussed daily in Swedish media. My other reasons for exploring digital “piracy” is that I have a teenage son and daughter who frequent sites such as The Pirate Bay and they keep telling me “it’s all legal mom, don’t worry…” Keep in mind when reading this blog that this is an entirely new topic to me and I can only tackle this subject from the perspective of a novice. Even though many articles I read and have read are in Swedish, I will naturally translate my findings to English and also use the English versions of names associated with The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay was set up by the Piracy Bureau in 2003. The The Piracy Bureau (http://piratbyran.org/) is a Swedish think tank which questions current copyright regulation and intellectual property rights (1). Along with support from the Piracy Bureau, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg set up the site and developed the file sharing technology. Some financial support was eventually received from Swedish industrialist, Carl Lundström and their official spokesperson has for the last few years been Peter Sunde (2). The Piracy Bureau website is, unfortunately written mostly in Swedish, but includes interesting details about the organization, or the “ongoing conversation” as the authors prefers to call it, regarding digital information infrastructure and copying of digital files (3). The cassette and crossbones logo used for the Piracy Bureau symbolizes the important invention of the cassette tape in the 1960s which revolutionized the possibility for individuals to record and copy music as well as other audio files. The first cassette tape produced by Philips was not patented in order to stimulate continuing production and innovation in the industry (4). In todays file sharing debate this is perhaps miniscule, but it does remind us that copying of music and audio has an almost 50 year old history. I was able to download their logo without risking copyright infringement since I provide a URL to the Piracy Bureau on this blog.

At the center of The Pirate Bay’s legal litigation is its Bit-Torrent tracker client software. Instead of The Pirate Bay hosting audio, video and text files, the Bit-Torrent software splits the files into smaller units or chunks and spreads them to as many host computers it can locate. The information about the units is kept in what is referred to as a torrent file or a tracker file on The Pirate Bay site. The tracker files have the ability to locate the different units on the host computers. In order to download a torrent tracker file, the user must first download a client program such as Bit-Torrent developed by The Pirate Bay (or other similar program—there are many more). The Bit-Torrent program delivers the various units of an audio or video file from host computers (around the world) to the user’s computer and when all the files have been downloaded the Bit-Torrent software reassembles the file for the user (5). This means that The Pirate Bay and other similar internet sites do not store the entire files on their sites and are considered peer-to-peer networks. The latter is becoming increasingly common and is not in itself an illegal activity. In fact, peer-to-peer networking is becoming a daily activity for most newspaper sites as well as popular internet sites such as Google and Yahoo (6). Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is certainly an interesting and innovative development. I found the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer) illustrations (on the right side) helpful when trying to conceptualize the difference between a P2P and a client server model.

In February of 2009, the four men behind The Pirate Bay (names noted above) were charged by the Swedish court for having violated copyright because the site assists with distributing illegal (copyrighted) music, films and texts (including text books). The trial in Stockholm attracted world-wide media attention. Followers and supporters of the Piracy Bureau, The Pirate Bay and the newly formed Pirate Party were also present (7). Each step in this trial was also followed closely by live bloggers who attended the trial, and the Pirates own blog, privatliv (=private life, site is down and currently under reconstruction). Nathalie Roos Holmberg, a journalist at the Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, followed the blog and reports that bloggers found the trial a joke and laughed openly at the persecutors arguments (8). Due to the high volume of writers the blog actually crashed at one point during the trial (9).

An interesting side story to The Pirate Bay trial is the formation of the Pirate Party in Sweden and in other countries in Europe. In the recent EU parliament election June 7, 2009, the Pirate Party headed by Rickard Falkvinge received enough votes for one seat in the EU parliament. The party ran on a plat form of only the three following issues: Reform copyright law, Abolish the patent system, and Respect the right for privacy (10). An analysis of The Pirate Bay trial and the Pirate Party will follow in the following two blog entries.

Bibliography

1. Anderson , Kevin . "FAQ: The Pirate Trial ." La Guardian 17 Apr. 2009. 30-31. 7 June 2009 .
2. Swords Drawn in Pirate Bay. Bill Thompson. New Statesmen 4 May 2009.
3. Piratbyrån. . 14 June 2009 .
4. "Kassetten och dödskallen ." Piratbyrån. 14 June 2009 http://www.piratbyran.org/?view=articles&id=82
5. Thompson , Bill . "Swords drawn in Pirate Bay ." New Statesman May.4 (2009): 30-31. 7 June 2009 .
6. Venkatramen, Archana. “Stick piracy flag where it belongs. The truth is we may all be copyright infringers.” Information World Review May (2009): 7 June 2009 .
7. ”Pirate Bay inför rätta. Rättegången mot Pirate Bay – dag 1.” Dagens Nyheter 16 Feb. 2009 [Stockholm ] . 18 June 2009 http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/rattegangen-mot-pirate-bay-dag-1-1.800295.
8. Holmberg, Natatlie R. “Bloggar skrattar åt rättegång.” Dagens Nyheter 5 June 2009 [Stockholm]. 6 June 2009 .
9. Piratpartiet.se 15 June 2009 http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english