Long Live The Pirate Bay

[Mark]

Warning: This topic is not about discussing warez. You may discuss about torrent sites, but not spread links of warez which are against the rules.
We were discussing this a bit on Friday's LVP Talkshow, but I think you all already read about this.

Four men behind a Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange movies and music have been found guilty of collaborating to violate copyright law in a landmark court verdict in Stockholm.
A Pirate Bay server, confiscated by police last year, on display in Stockholm's Technical Museum.

The four defendants -- Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, three founders and one patron of The Pirate Bay -- were sentenced to one year in jail and also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several major media companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG and EMI.

The defendants are free without restrictions while they appeal the judgment.

The Pirate Bay allows users to exchange files including movies, music, games and software, but does not host the files itself. It claims more than 3.5 million registered users.

The court case, which involved both a criminal case and a civil claim brought by the media companies, marks a key victory for anti-piracy campaigners, who had long targeted the Web site. Should the perpetrators of Internet piracy be punished? Have your say

The year-long prison terms are for violating Swedish law, while the damages are compensation to the media giants in the civil case -- though the court ordered the men to pay just one-third of the 110 million kronor ($13 million) which the companies had asked for.

Friday's verdict did not include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay site.

Its owners have consistently shrugged off legal threats and police raids, posting letters from entertainment industry lawyers on their Web site with mocking responses.

When Dreamworks studio demanded that the site act over file-sharing of Dreamworks' movie "Shrek 2," The Pirate Bay threatened to sue for harassment and lodge a formal complaint "for sending frivolous legal threats."

"It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ... morons," the response continued, suggesting that studio representatives perform a sexual act. The response closed with an obscenity.

Site owners dismissed the effects of a police raid in 2006, saying the site had been down longer on other occasions due to illness or drunkenness than when "the U.S. and Swedish government forces the police to steal our servers ... yawn."

Read more here

I think The Pirate Bay is one of the worst torrent trackers ever. It contains nudity in ads, and the site is fully loaded with ads, and that really sucks because it takes page to load forever, even if you have a fast internet connection plus some of the torrents contain other things besides the original file, even if it has lots of seeders; helll even Mininova is better. I personally prefer private torrent tracker sites, so I don't really use those public ones.

[Greyfox]

i <3 thepiratebay

im actully dling 3 torrents right now

[FarePak]

This doesn't mean TBP is dead, plus TBP sucks, I use private sites like TL, RevTT, FTN, ect.

I only use TBP when I can't find the movies on the private torrent sites, they fined TBP like £5 million but whats that gonna do? A few months worth of revenue generated from the site is probably more than that.

Plus this news is 2 days old.

[Felle]

Sweden fucking sucks.

[FarePak]

Sweden fucking sucks.

I know theres full of people like you.

[Alpha]

The Pages don't take me long to load

[Dannytrfc]

owned

[cloakster]

I never used torrents so i could care less

RS ftw

[FarePak]

Torrents don't charge you unlike RS

[cloakster]

Torrents don't charge you unlike RS

Do torrents have as much uploaded to them as RS? no. Are torrents able to use your full bandwidth? no.

RS>Torrents

Im not gonna change my mind, so dont try