Pirate Bay’s Former ISP Sets Up Defense Fund

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — File-sharing site Pirate Bay is endorsing financial support for a newly formed organization called Open Internet, which is collecting money to pay the Black Internet’s court costs as it appeals a Swedish court’s decision to cease its hosting of Pirate Bay.

“Help them to appeal the judgment towards Black Internet and to prevent and deter future harassments of other ISPs,” Pirate Bay said in its blog. “Act now, before our online freedom and rights as we know them, are sold to the media mega-corporations by people like this.”

In August, a court in Stockholm ordered Pirate Bay to be disconnected from the Internet and threatened the site's hosting providers with a fine of 500,000 Swedish krona, or about $70,000.

Black Internet did not appeal at the time because of the cost, but since then has changed its mind, according to reports.

A FAQs section of OpenInternet.se lays out the purpose of the nonprofit organization and informs as to where donations will be allocated.

“Your donations today mainly go towards continuing the legal process and help Black Internet in their appeal, but also to build the organization behind Open Internet,” the organization says on its site.

In its defense, the Black Internet said it acted as a supplier for Pirate Bay and is not responsible for monitoring the site’s traffic.

“For Open Internet, the Black Internet case is not about whether The Pirate Bay or any specific form of file sharing or aiding of file sharing is legal or not,” the organization said. “The main issue in this case is whether it is right to place the responsibility on ISPs and, if so, under which circumstances. In the extension, this type of court order risks resulting in that ISPs do not allow access to ‘inconvenient’ persons or organizations.”

The Open Internet also said it would allocate remaining assets to the civil liberties advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation should it become defunct.

The site went live on Wednesday and has so far collected about $700.

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