Pirate Bay to challenge Dutch ban
The owners of Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay will seek a retrial after a Dutch court temporarily banned its activities in the Netherlands, their lawyer said on Monday.
"We will file a summons by August 25" before the district court in Amsterdam, lawyer Ernst Louwers, acting for The Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, told AFP.
The men wanted a new trial so that they could present their side of the story, he explained.
On July 30, the court granted an urgent application brought by copyright lobby group Stichting Brein for an interdict against the site. The site's owners had not been present for the hearing.
A judge ordered them to "cease infringing the copyright of the members" of Stichting Brein -- a trade association representing the Dutch recording industry.
The interdict was to remain valid for two months, by which time Stichting Brein must have filed an application for a permanent ruling, or it will lapse.
The judge ordered Neij, Warg and Sunde to immediately make their website inaccessible to users in the Netherlands. Failure to do so would be punishable to the tune of 30,000 euros (42,000 dollars) per day, up to three million euros.
Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay makes it possible to skirt copyright fees and share music, film and computer game files for free using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site.
None of the material can be found on the server of The Pirate Bay, which claims to have more than 20 million users worldwide.
Stichting Brein said Monday it would not oppose The Pirate Bay's bid for a new trial, but said it had "no doubt" the judgment would be maintained.
The body agreed to the suspension of the 30,000-euro-a-day fine for the month of August, until The Pirate Bay reopens the case.
A Swedish court in April found Neij, Warg and Sunde guilty with a fourth colleague, Carl Lundstroem, for promoting copyright infringement by running the site and sentenced them to a year in prison.
(c) 2009 AFP
