The Pirate Bay Still Sailing As Major Charges Dropped

Half of the charges against the popular bit torrent-based file-sharing service were dropped on Tuesday, according to BBC News, leaving The Pirate Bay's four defendants on trial for "assisting making available copyright material" -- a significantly less severe charge than the dropped "assisting copyright infringement."

The lessened charges are now the primary focus because The Pirate Bay's counsel successfully argued that bit torrent files aren't compelling as evidence to prosecute The Pirate Bay. That's because, according to the defense and accepted by the court, they don't demonstrate clear illegal activity on Pirate Bay's part.

The plaintiffs are being led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The labels' counsel, Peter Danowsky, told BBC News: "It's largely a technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay. In fact, it simplifies the prosecutor's case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works."

At the outset of the trial, four defendants -- The Pirate Bay's founders Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and an investor, Carl Lundstrom -- were up against big fines and as much as two years' jail time if they'd been convicted of all charges.

The entertainment industry labels -- which include Universal, Warner Bros., MGM, EMI, Sony BMG, 20th Century Fox and others -- claimed compensation of about $16.6 million.

Later on Tuesday, the Web site TorrentFreak posted translated comments from defense lawyer Per E. Samuelson, who said, "This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday."

The Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that indexes and tracks bit torrent files, launched in 2003 and in six years has become one of the most popular bit torrent sites on the Web. In the past few months, it has listed between 22-25 million users, according to various reports.

The Pirate Bay says it hosts no copyrighted content on its Web servers, but using the common defense for most bit torrent sites in record company crosshairs, says it hosts bit torrent links between the systems of its users.

The Pirate Bay has been the target of many copyright lawsuits over the years, and perhaps represents the next generation of file sharing bete noirs -- after Napster, Grokster, Kazaa and the like -- that music, movie and other recording industry labels have sought to identify as copyright law breakers.