As The Pirate Bay Guys Lose Their Appeal, When Does Google Regret Not Coming To Their Defense?

from the search-engines... dept

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As you probably already know, last Friday (while we were enjoying some much needed time off), the Swedish appeals court upheld the lower court's ruling against the four guys the entertainment industry claims were behind The Pirate Bay. The appeals court shortened the jail sentences, but increased the fines that each had to pay (one of the original four guys, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, missed this trial, but will be tried again separately). I don't think anyone watching the two trials is all that surprised by the outcome -- though, if you look at the details, it certainly suggests a court and law enforcement system that still has no clue concerning what it was actually dealing with. One of the defendants, Peter, has a rather interesting blog post (Google translation from the original Swedish ) in which he details a number of blatant factual errors made by the courts in the latest ruling. I'm sure that those who dislike The Pirate Bay will not pay attention to what he has to say and will assume he is lying. But it does appear that much of the ruling against Peter is based on a pretty blatant misunderstanding of basic technology, blaming him for things it's unlikely he had anything to do with whatsoever.What strikes me about this ruling -- and Homeland Security's seizure of a bunch of domain names, which I'll cover in a later post -- is that at some point, I believe Google is going to regret not getting involved on the side of The Pirate Bay in this trial. It's obviousthey did that. Google is already having enough trouble with the entertainment industry, and The Pirate Bay is still seen as sort of radioactive when it comes to these discussions. Supporting The Pirate Bay was simply not politically possible. In fact, Google went the other direction and tried to specifically distance itself from The Pirate Bay. Yet, for all intents and purposes, The Pirate Bay was also a search engine. A specialized one, but really no different in important respects than Google. The specific points that got The Pirate Bay in trouble could all be equally applied to a general purpose search engine like Google. And with Google already dealing with executives given prison sentences due to its services in other countries, you'd think it would be a bit more sensitive to realizing the slippery slope created when you send someone to jail for the way a search engine is used.

Filed Under: copyright, liability, search engines, sweden, the pirate bay

Companies: google, the pirate bay