The Media Market

The Internet file sharing community has its own version of Cutthroat Island. And the MPAA seems to have been able to push the Swedish police into taking actions against The Pirate Bay - one of the leading file distributors on the net. This is indeed an interesting case of property rights, since TPB does not provide actual files but merely torrent files, which by themselves contain no copyright data — merely pointers to sources of the content. That makes The Pirate Bay’s activities perfectly legal under Swedish statutory and case law. “Until the law is changed so that it is clear that the trackers are illegal, or until the Swedish Supreme Court rules that current Swedish copyright law actually outlaws trackers, we’ll continue our activities. Relentlessly,” claims the founders of TPB. Well, yesterday the Swedish police raided the raiders. But I imagine this battle is far from over.