Whatever the truth about The Pirate Bay, its administrators certainly put on a convincing show of not being particularly astute businessmen—the sort of people who don't read the contracts they sign, don't proof the speeches they read, and don't actually care much for the law.

The Pirate Bay trial just wrapped up its fourth day in Sweden, making front-page headlines in local papers ("Fiasco for prosecution in Pirate Bay case," said one) and stirring up comments from Abba members ("Is it really so damn difficult to pay your way?" asked Bj?rn Ulvaeus). Music trade group IFPI even had its local Swedish website hacked and defaced by a group called "The new generation."

But it was the courtroom action today that was most interesting, as two of The Pirate Bay defendants took to the witness stand and answered questions. Sweden allows a commingling of civil and criminal cases sometimes, leading to the odd spectacle of the defendants being questioned both by state prosecutor Hakan Roswall and industry lawyers from the music and movie industries.

Fredrik Neij was questioned by lawyers who tried to paint him as the point man for The Pirate Bay operations. Peter Danowsky, who represents the music business, pointed out that Niej owned The Pirate Bay's domain and then showed him a contract he had signed saying that he would oversee operations for the site. Neij's response? "But I didn't read it."

Neij was also asked about a speech he gave back in 2006 (watch it on YouTube) in which he said that the site had received many threatening letters over the years from copyright owners. Lawyers tried to use the speech to show that Pirate Bay admins were aware the site hosted links to copyrighted content. Neij's response? "I just read the text which someone at the Pirate Bureau had written.” (Neij says he's dyslexic and has difficult writing his own material.)

When asked about his view of the law as it related to copyrights, Neij said that he doesn't worry much about the law, doesn't care about the ideology behind (some) file-swapping, and does what he does because it's fun to run a large site. He did indicate that he thought the site was legal.

The datan?rd speaks



Image credit: Gottfrid Svartholm WargImage credit: Wikimedia Commons

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is exactly the sort of person who shouldn't wear a scruffy little beard, but does—one Swedish commentator referred to him today as a prototypical "datan?rd" (data nerd). He took the stand today and showed the same lack of apparent interest in ownership, contracts, and legal papers as Fredrik Neij.

The prosecutor kept trying to pin him down on who ran the site, how it was organized, and who paid for (and received the revenue from) site operations. Varg kept insisting that the project wasn't a "top-down" business, but that interested users volunteered time and effort to make different pieces of it work. The prosecution appeared not to believe this and continued asking questions to tease out the relationships between everyone involved. Warg continued to insist it was a "loose project"—even the moderators who took down material that didn't match its stated description were volunteers.

The apparent disconnect between the defendants and a prosecution convinced that The Pirate Bay is an organized criminal enterprise swimming in cash prompted Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge to reflect on the "generation clash" between the two sides.

But prosecutors and industry lawyers remain convinced that the appearance of disorganization is an illusion. Many of today's questions turned on The Pirate Bay's relationship with an Israeli businessman who served as an ad broker and helped the group with some other business ideas.

Peter Danowsky of IFPI yesterday said in a statement, "This [case] is about a purposeful crime on a grand scale with significant income as a result," noting that the Bay continued to display ads after being raided by Swedish police.

We checked in with the Bay's Peter Sunde in 2008 after claims emerged that the site was pulling in more than $3 million a year. Without providing any specific numbers, Sunde told Ars that real numbers weren't that high and that bandwidth, power, and hardware bills meant that the site was either breaking even or operating at a slight loss.

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