#DIGC102 Information Search Assignment Report
The ongoing saga of the BitTorrent tracker ‘The Pirate Bay’ has been a topic of much discussion on the web over the past few months, being covered on news sites, blogs and in academic writings. Already being a magnet for controversy after claiming to be “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” (Wikipedia 2009), the Pirate Bay garnered a significant increase in media attention this year when the four operators of the site were found guilty of being accessories to crime against copyright law. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem were each sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay approximately 3.5 million USD in fines and damages (Ohlin 2009).
The reaction to this decision in the blogosphere has largely been in favour of The Pirate Bay. One blog, for example, was very keen to publish details about and encourage Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm’s DDO$ attack plan which, if successful, would end up costing the prosecuting law firm millions of dollars. Another blog exposed the judge of the trial as having affiliations with pro-copyright groups, possibly leading to a conflict of interest. During the trial The Pirate Bay also set up its own blog to update users on all the developments from an internal perspective as well as using a popular Twitter hash tag which continues to be used at #spectrial.
Academics and scholarly writers appear to have always had a keen interest in The Pirate Bay with a search of “pirate bay” in UOW’s library database revealing 118 results dating from August this year back to 2006. A Google Scholar search of the same term gives 443 results since 2004. These academics tend to focus on the impact that the Pirate Bay and BitTorrent have had on copyright relations. Some also outline how the verdict of the trial will have little to no impact on file sharing due to the ‘decentralization’ of The Pirate Bay and modern file sharing in general (Raphael 2009).
There is no doubt that these various online sources of information will continue to cover the Pirate Bay chronicles as further developments emerge such as the appeal of the verdict and the preparation of the Pirate Bay’s new IPREDator service begins to allow net users to surf with ‘greater anonymity’.
Bibliography
Adrian, A 2009, ‘The Pirate Bay deep-sixed’, Computer Law & Security Report, vol.22, no.5, 2006, pp392-401, accessed 19/8/2009, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VB3-4KTPS50-7/2/d86fb6238673e0ac56e26426320a234e
BP Team 2009, ‘Pirate Bay Founder Devises DDo$ Attack’, weblog post, Blog Pirate, accessed 19/8/2009, http://www.blogpirate.org/2009/05/10/pirate-bay-founder-crafts-distributed-denial-of-dollars-attack/
Kravets, D 2009, ‘Landmark Pirate Bay Trial Begins Monday’, weblog post, Wired, accessed 19/8/2009, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/02/pirate/
Li, M 2009, ‘The Pirate Party and the Pirate Bay: How the Pirate Bay Influences Sweden and International Copyright Relations’, Pace International Law Review, vol.21, pp281-307, accessed 19/8/2009, http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=intlaw
Music Ally 2009, ‘Pirate Bay trial judge slammed for pro-copyright affiliations’, weblog post, accessed 19/8/2009, http://musically.com/blog/2009/04/23/pirate-bay-trial-judge-slammed-for-pro-copyright-affiliations/
Ohlin, P 2009, ‘Court jails The Pirate Bay founders for a year’, smh.com.au, accessed 19/8/2009, http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/court-jails-the-pirate-bay-founders-for-a-year-20090417-aa5h.html
Raphael, J 2009, ‘File Sharing’s Future After the Pirate Bay Verdict’, PC World, vol.27, iss.7, p13, accessed 19/8/2009, http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=08-18-2014&FMT=7&DID=1796324441&RQT=309
Spectrial 2009, accessed 19/8/2009, http://trial.thepiratebay.org/
Wikipedia 2009, ‘The Pirate Bay’, accessed 19/8/2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay
