“Wall-E” is an animated movie about a robot (Wall-E) all alone on planet Earth, which is no longer able to sustain life. Soon a probe (Eve) visits Earth and Wall-E fall in love. To show his appreciation he gives her a plant that he found, the probe recognizes it as a lifeform and the adventure starts. It is really good movie, awesome animation and brilliant sound! Really worth seeing.
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Today more witnesses for the defense was heard and finally someone who could explain how the technology works, Kristoffer Schollin. In particular that even though a torrent-file is uploaded to the The Pirate Bay website it doesn’t mean that TPB tracker is being used, and also that the amount of completed downloads reported on the website could be downloads completed using any tracker, not only TPB, as a torrent can have many trackers listed when it was first created and the same torrent can be used on many different trackers at the same time.
Also professor Roger Wallis, with an impressive CV, presented his view and research that the link between falling sales figures of the CD industry cannot be blaimed on file sharing technology and illegal copying. He also started by pointing out that Henrik Pontén of the anti-piracy agency had been calling to the university and his collegues asking if was indeed a real professor and questioning his work, something that was very upsetting and Wallis said he considered pressing charges against Pontén.
I think today was a very good day in court and it seemed like many got a much more clear view on how everything actually works with BitTorrent and TPB, and hopefully it is now much easier to come to the conclusion that TPB has very little to do with the actual illegal file-sharing process.
The questioning of witnesses continued on wednesday, day seven of the trial against The Pirate Bay. We heard John Kennedy of IFPI answer questions, translated by some Omar who did a piss-poor job (!), about the negative financial impact on the music industry by sites such as TPB, and that the compensation claims are justified and even conservative. He claims that there are research papers available that suggests that people who do not get the music for free would then buy it and that piracy is to blaim for the falling sales figures in the music industry, a statement which I totally do not agree with. I don’t know anyone who would buy the CDs they have downloaded from the web if they hadn’t found it for free. Also I think it’s common that you download a CD or song and then buy the album because you like it and want to support the smaller artists, a behaviour which benefits less known artists on the expense of the world famous artists who already swim in money.
Today it was announced that the Swedish crown princess Victoria and her boyfriend of seven years, Daniel Westling, are now officially engaged to be married. King Carl XVI Gustaf has given his blessing and requested the Swedish government to do the same. The royal family announced the news on national television earlier today and later the happy couple held a press-conference where they described how Westling kneeled and proposed to the crown princess at the castle of Drottningholm on a beautiful sunny winter day and Victoria said “yes, yes, yes”. This is also a very happy day for many people in Sweden and a welcome break from the unfortunate financial news. The wedding is planned to take place in the spring of year 2010, but no exact date is decided yet.
Daniel Westling is a gym owner and entrepreneur and used to be personal trainer and close friend the crown princess. Westling is not of noble birth, but rather a man of the people, which is good or bad depending on who you ask. He has been struggling alot with being accepted by the royal family as well as the people of Sweden, but he says he will try his best to earn the trust of everyone.
Today the defense got the opportunity to question some people that are the ones that collected the evidence (Antipiratbyrån, “anti-piracy agency”) of The Pirate Bay by downloading files from TPB site. To me it seemed like neither the witnesses nor the defense attorney had very high technical knowledge about the BitTorrent-techonology, and there were alot confusion about whether they were talking about the client software, the TPB website, the torrent-file or the actual data content sometimes.
The prosecution talked alot about what evidence were collected by the anti-piracy agency and how easy it is to download from The Pirate Bay website.
But I think the defense successfully pointed out that from the evidence presented in this trial one cannot see if the torrent-tracker being used is actually TPB or some other site (by other users/peers), and also that there were no attempts to contact the original torrent uploader nor the seeders of the file in question. They also pointed out that the torrent-client is not provided by TPB and that there is no way of telling how many copies have been made of the file before it reaches The Pirate Bay. Some good points were made by the defense, even though the attorney seemed abit lost with the technical terms (to my surprise), but even more so the witness :).
“Yes man” is a movie with Jim Carrey about a man (Carl) who misses out on life because he always says no to friends etc. He is pulled into a weird program where everyone have to say “yes” to every question and opportunity. Carl tries it out and even though he gets himself into many awkward situations, but in general he starts to feel more alive and really enjoying life, finds a great girl, getting more friends and a better job. I think it’s a good movie, perhaps not a groundbreaking plot, but worth seeing if you like movies like “50 first dates” or simular movies.
The fifth day of the trial against The Pirate Bay continued with questioning of Peter Sunde about his involvement with the website and companies handling the advertisements on TPB and Carl Lundström about his financial help of TPB. There were alot of irritation and the defense protested against the trial becoming very American when the prosecution introduced evidence that were not known by the defense, some YouTube-clips and also mail conversations and blog entries which did not take place in the time frame within this trial. Peter Sunde wanted an answer from advocate Peter Danowsky if this was supposed to be a political trial and that he didn’t feel it was appropriate for questions about his political views, but was refused an answer.
I think it’s annoying that they talk so much about their personal businesses, finances, whether or not they make money of the site. Which in my oppinion has nothing to do whether or not the website is illegal or not, which should be the main issue here. The website is not less legal just depending on the organisation structure of TPB, what personal business they are involved with or what political views they have. I hope there will be more discussions in court soon about the actual legislation regarding the technical solutions used.
© 2010 Another 15 minutes
Magnus "Draupner" Werner, Silverstone Systems.