A number of days after the makers of Bit Torrent tracker website The Pirate Bay were put on trial for copyright charges, prosecutors have amended the charges after misunderstanding what the site actually does.
Charges were laid against Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom that applied to copyright theft charges. But Pirate Bay does not host copyright material, it only offers a search engine that points to illegal content – so the charges have been amended to making copyrighted works available.
But legal counsel for the music companies in the case, Peter Danowsky, tells itnews.com.au that any changes have been minimal. “It is a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims, and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay,” he said.
“In fact it simplifies the prosecutor’s case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works.”
Companies including Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal are all part of the prosecution.
But Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde isn’t too worried. He wrote on Twitter that the trial was “boring”, and that he was “sleepy”.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
