

Pirate Bay Trial Day 5: Peter’s "Political Trial" - ivank
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-trial-day-5-peters-political-trial-090220/

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jrockway
I am really enjoying reading about this trial.

Usually when you put "geeks" on the stand, they immediately spill their guts,
making the conviction trivial. (Example: Hans Reiser.) In this case, the
defendants always have a clever reply for the prosecutor's "clever" question,
which is making the prosecution's case extremely difficult. (Also making the
case difficult is the silliness of the law, and the innocence of the
defendants.)

My guess is that TPB has a really good legal team that prepared the TPB folks
for all of the prosecution's questions. That is also good to see. Usually the
people with worthy causes don't have enough money to defend themselves from
the Big Bad Corporations, but in this case they do.

Finally, the prosecutor(s?) don't seem very competent about anything. The
quote yesterday about DHT and being able to distribute torrents via e-mail
seemed to really confuse them. (You mean TPB isn't actually making copyrighted
files available? Damn, there goes our whole case!)

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ensignavenger
TPB guys have been very careful from the beginning of the site to ensure that
they have crossed every t and dotted every i in following the law.

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wmf
Maybe things are different in Sweden, but under common law that's pretty
difficult, especially in copyright where some situations have never been
tested in court. A lot of lawyers were going around saying that Grokster was
obviously legal while others were saying it was obviously illegal. IANAL.

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jacquesm
I think I've clued in to something, the prosecution is doing it's very best to
try to establish more than just an advertiser link between Oded Daniel and TPB
crew, they are trying to make it out as though Oded Daniel is the owner of TPB
and the guys they caught are employees.

The reason for that is probably because they can't imagine that a bunch of
gifted young people would be capable of such a feat, they have to invoke the
'guy behind the screen' in order to make it more believable for themselves.

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thaumaturgy
Yes and no. I think they're trying to find a single point of responsibility.
TPB crew keeps dancing around who was responsible for which aspects of TPB,
which makes prosecution extremely difficult.

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jacquesm
It does, but it is also a dangerous game, the judge could simply order them to
give testimony as to who is responsible for any one of those aspects. Somebody
has to actually do it, if nobody 'did it' then somebody is lying... and lying
to a judge is not very smart.

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thaumaturgy
I've been surprised by exactly that. What I'm reading into the trial so far --
and I'm only reading the English summaries, so I'm probably missing out on a
lot -- is that TPB aren't really completely owning up to, "He wrote the code,
he did the graphics, he did this, we did that..." It almost even sounds like
every time the prosecution tries to nail down responsibility for anything, the
defendant says, "I only did that a little".

IF that's what's going on, then IF I were the judge or a jury member, I would
interpret that as people avoiding responsibility for their actions, which to
me would imply that they thought they were guilty of a crime.

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jacquesm
Interesting. So, if they were so sure that they were not guilty then they'd
have no problem in owning up to who did what. After all, if you are sure it is
legal then that would be the cleanest strategy. By being wishy-washy they
suggest that they are not so sure it is legal.

Hm...

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electromagnetic
> _“Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”_

A copyright lawyer, out of date? _Never!_

