In case you missed it, the four leading characters behind popular bittorrent tracker The Pirate Bay have been convicted for “assisting in making copyright content available".
Not to worry, they say, but what does the verdict really mean?
Well, for starters, the website & tracker of The Pirate Bay are a free service provided to the people. A means to share files over a commonly used protocol (BitTorrent). It is only that – a free service. It does not judge its content to be good, or bad. It doesn’t matter whether all files are legal, or illegal. The Pirate Bay provides the platform to exchange them, but does not encourage nor discourage sharing illegal files. A website (or software application) that uses a popular protocol.
The sentence in itself (1y prison for all defendants + a couple million in fines) isn’t important. It’s the fact they were convicted in the first place. They face jail-time because users (ab)used The Pirate Bay’s service. They used their platform to share illegal files.
This is a huge deal, as this verdict means any service provider can be found guilty for what their visitors do. Any ISP could be held (partly) responsible for content that travels over their network, whether legal or illegal. Any website owner can be held responsible for links that are placed in forums, images posted in galleries, … If this goes on – ISP’s could eventually be forced to filter all traffic, and take responsibility to prevent illegal usages. When will the war on privacy start then?
Since “assisting making copyright content available” is a insanely wide verdict, this can eventually be tracked back to software engineers who create applications that can be abused, ISPs that host website that violate copyright in any way, website administrators that happen to manage a hijacked forum, … When you go back far enough, even the backbone carriers are to blame for sending the network traffic out to other networks in the first place.
While the verdict isn’t final just yet (they appealed – d’uh), it is definately something to keep watch on. It’s a very public case with a lot of press attention, and its outcome could mean a great deal for future lawsuits concerning any kind of internet service provider, or software engineer.
**Update 21/04/2009
It appears BT is among the first to block access to The Pirate Bay, and it seems several other bittorrent trackers are taking precautionary measures to protect themselves.**
And what’s the deal with Google’s Torrent Search?