The 'legal threats' section of The Pirate Bay is where record labels, movie companies, software house and general anti-pirates have their complaints posted after the staff on the site have ridiculed them. A new set of complaints has appeared in the last few days - some of the most cringe-worthy ever.

When organizations and companies don’t like it that their material – be it music, movies, games or software – are indexed by a torrent site, very often they will contact the site in question and demand that the relevant .torrent files are removed. A lot of sites will remove the files but a few refuse.

Most people know that The Pirate Bay doesn’t like to remove torrents at the copyright holders request, in fact they claim they have never removed any. Instead, when a copyright holder enters into dialogue with the staff, instead of removing the files in question the site posts the discussions up in the ‘Legal Threats’ section. Most of the discussions are entertaining to a degree, with some even extending to personal insults.

However, during the last few days, another copyright complaint and subsequent discussion has been posted and although many might find it funny, personally I found it quite embarrassing raising the question: Should copyright holders just keep their complaints to themselves to maintain some dignity – at least where The Pirate Bay is concerned?

The complaint comes from Ian Morrow at UK based label Gr8pop Ltd, representing American vocalist Indiana Gregg. Morrow requested the removal of a .torrent linking to the album “Woman At Work”, but the request was worded in an unfortunate way which appeared to betray a lack of legal understanding:

We request that you have the file removed immediately as this is legal copyright and has not been authorised to be released as an illegal download.

Of course, it didn’t take long before Peter Sunde, aka brokep, decided to start tearing it apart:

Is it possible to authorise something to be an illegal download? That would be a legal download if it would be authorised now, wouldn’t it. Also, i’ve never heard of “legal copyright” (nor illegal copyright for that matter). I think you need to re-check your intentions of the e-mail and try again. We do not respond to messages that do not make 100% perfect sense. You’re confused.

The response back to Peter starts the farce ball rolling, as it always seems do with these complaints. Ian Morrow starts by insisting that BitTorrent or any other form of sharing is illegal, “full stop”, but of course, that’s not true. Not really a good start, but Ian is just warming up, informing Peter that “..having sat on cross parliamentary committees, resolved to regenerating music and culture in my country, I’m afraid you may just have picked the wrong person to cross swords with on this occasion.”

Indeed, the email to Peter was copied to many other people including many people in the Scottish parliament, the MCPS, the PPL, the late Roy Orbision’s wife and many other people, including Indiana herself.

However, things take a turn for the strange. Ian goes on to state that due to people sharing the album his company is almost bankrupt (along with him personally) and Indiana herself – despite her current position of No.1 in the MySpace charts and the 4th most viewed artist on YouTube. The inevitable response from Peter is what we have to come to expect:

You’re a hoot, that’s what you are :) I want to hug you in a non-sexual way and tell you that you make my heart burst of joy and cuddle up like a cute little cookie monster and ask for more milk…. and btw, to be in a business you have very little knowledge on what you’re doing. I would actually see you as a retard, but it’s hard when you’re so cuddly and manly! I wish I was just 20 years older and a girl… oh my..

Sadly, instead of realizing where all this is heading, Indiana Gregg herself steps in with a response of her own (including a lesson on copyright law – United States law), which basically gives Peter more ammunition to respond in his own inimitable style. It is all very messy and very embarrassing – and it gets worse.

Undeterred and armed with a shaky understanding of the scope of the law she’s trying to enforce, Indiana writes to Peter with a fairly detailed explanation of a torrent site’s obligations under the DMCA, but makes the same mistake as so many others. The DMCA is a US law and The Pirate Bay is not in the United States, leaving herself wide open for further ridicule.

Indiana goes on to explain that she’s actually a millionaire after all, contradicting Ian’s earlier bankruptcy comments which were clearly designed to tug on Peter’s heart strings. Unfortunately when it comes to copyright, Peter’s heart is made of stone.

Which brings us to the point I raised at the start of this post. What actually is the point of complaining to The Pirate Bay? They aren’t going to take down any torrents and they will publicize all of these copyright discussions with the aim of making the sender look badly informed. Despite the deliberate (and probably calculated) juvenile tone adopted by Peter Sunde, the senders of the complaints always seem to come off worse, due to their very apparent lack of understanding of the law.

So, are these complaints down to sheer desperation or are these labels really that badly informed about the law? Maybe when Ian’s friends in the Scottish parliament see the correspondence they will be suitably outraged and pledge seriously to do something. Trouble is, if the law in Sweden can’t do anything about The Pirate Bay crew right now, what can be done at all?

As the complaints pile up and the stakes increase, The Pirate Bay continues on, treating the anti-pirates with contempt and offering them continuing public humiliation. It seems now that the only thing that can stop the site is a defeat in court, but since servers are scattered right around the world, all the signs point to the likelihood that even that won’t bring a halt to the torrents – or the complaints.

You can read the exchanges here: One, Two, Three and Four