Monday, Mar 2, 2009    Text size: 

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall, along with representatives from the film and recording industries all appeared to deliver arguments against the accused, all of them focusing on the idea that defendants Carl Lundström, Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg broke Swedish law by running their site.

Roswall didn’t argue about the legality of BItTorrent technology itself, instead arguing that the defendants had used it in a nefarious way. The Swedish Supreme Court had already ruled that bulletin board proprietors can infringe on copyrights depending on how they run their sites. Rowall tried to portray the defendants’ actions in the same light.

In addition, Roswall trundled out some big numbers. He looked at The Pirate Bay’s download statistics and linked those to lost money, claiming that the site had helped distribute about $1.26 million worth of illegal content, or 10 million Swedish kronor.

“Where is my 10 million, please, I want it, where is it?” Roswall said.

But despite grim figures, the prosecution in this key piracy case has been continually dropping the ball. Days into the trial, they downgraded charges from "complicity in the production of copyrighted material" to "complicity to make [copyrighted material] available."

On day seven, witness Magnus Mårtensson brought forth a detailed series of screenshots showing how he downloaded illegal content from The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, defense attorneys pointed out that he didn’t back up his screenshots with any kind of digital records of his actions.

For more information, visit TorrentFreak.com.