Google has reportedly made significant changes to its search algorithms, driving down results that are clearly associated with file-sharing websites. The company appears to have blacklisted some of the most popular sharing sites, including The Pirate Bay, Btjunkie, isoHunt and TorrentReactor, along with locker sites such as FileSonic and FileServe.
The FBI has reportedly raided the Los Angeles apartment of a Screen Actor's Guild member who is believed to have been the first to upload movies that include The King's Speech, Black Swan and more to The Pirate Bay. The source of the information is court documents, ArsTechnica maintains. The actor in question is Wes DeSoto and the authorities are investigating whether he is linked to prerelease movie uploading group TiMPE.
The IFPI tried to raise alarm on Thursday with a warning in its latest annual report that digital music sales were slowing down. Sales through iTunes and other outlets climbed by just six percent worldwide and made up 29 percent of their revenues. The slowdown came both from a maturing of the digital music market but was also blamed on piracy.
The Pirate Bay torrent site, following its loss in a Swedish court, has now gone offline, after the site's Internet Service Provider was ordered by the court to take it offline. The ISP, Black Internet, faced a fine equivalent to $70,600 for not complying with the law. The Pirate Bay operators have found another ISP, however, with the service expected to come back online on Tuesday.
The Pirate Bay torrent hosting website has lost another court case in Amsterdam, this time at the hands of anti-piracy organization BREIN. According to a Thursday TorrentFreak report, the site is required to cease all operations in the Netherlands in 10 days or face maximum penalties of the equivalent of more than $4.2 million, or $42,300 per person per day after the deadline. Lawyers representing BREIN argued The Pirate Bay is responsible for millions of copyright infringements and needs to be blocked to Danish web users.
Swedish gaming company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) on Tuesday announced it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. With the process due to be concluded by August, it will see GGF introduce new business models to and make the site legal and keep its owners out of courts. The new owners will also sell shares of The Pirate Bay to investors. GGF will also buy Peerialism and introduce its P2P distribution technology on The Pirate Bay. At the same time, The Pirate Bay will stop hosting and tracking torrents and use a third-party tracker and torrent hosting service.
Taking action on earlier accusations, lawyers for The Pirate Bay have submitted a petition for a retrial, according to Reuters. Four of the people behind the website were each sentenced to a year in prison on April 17th, as well as paying $3.6 million in compensation to copyright holders. The judge for the case was unfairly biased however, claims Pirate Bay laywer Per Samuelson.
The judge that ruled against the Pirate Bay has today been accused by one of the site's attorneys of an unfair bias that invalidates the case. Lawyer Peter Althin in his motion to the Court of Appeal alleges that Judge Tomas Norström is or has been a member of the same copyright support groups as the media companies involved in the lawsuits, giving him an incentive to rule in their favor. Althin plans to demand a retrial and notes that one judge was already excluded from the case in the fall for similar reasons.
A court in Stockholm, Sweden has ruled against the four founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay on Friday. Accused of "assisting in making copyright content available," Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were each sentenced to serve one year in jail and ordered to pay a fine equivalent to about $905,000 each for a total of some $3.62 million by the court. The sum was short of what the prosecution representing recording studios were seeking, though it remains unknown.
