What Good Will A Swedish Lawsuit Against The Pirate Bay Do?
Date : 29 Jan 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
It's been expected for a while, but reports are coming out that Swedish prosecutors will finally get around to
filing charges against The Pirate Bay this week. If you don't remember, Swedish authorities bowed to US pressure a year and a half ago, and seized the servers of The Pirate Bay, a bittorrent search engine. As was noted at the time, the Pirate Bay doesn't host any infringing content, but simply acts as a search engine -- one that some artists have learned to use to their own advantage. The raid, which the entertainment industry quickly announced represented a "significant blow" against piracy, actually did the reverse. The resulting publicity, garnered the site a lot more attention, which has only continued to grow. It quickly set up new servers outside of Sweden, and it's hard to see a lawsuit doing very much but increasing the amount of attention given to the site. When the actual lawsuit is announced, expect quotes from the RIAA and MPAA about what a big deal this is -- but the only really big deal is how little this lawsuit will do to help the industry. It won't help them adjust to a changing market. It won't help them to adopt necessary new business models. It will only increase the attention given to the Pirate Bay and other sites. We've seen this before with Napster. We've seen this before with Grokster. We've seen this before with Kazaa. So why does the entertainment industry keep doing this?
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