redletterdave writes “While the movie and music industries would have you think that torrents are a threat to their business, thousands of independent artists heartily disagree. That’s why more than 5,000 musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers and artists have signed up to be promoted by The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest torrent site. Earlier this year, following the seizures of many popular file-sharing domains like MegaUpload, The (more…)

spyrochaete writes “Peter Sunde, formerly ‘brokep’ of The Pirate Bay, recently launched a beta version of Flattr — a micropayment service enabling internet users to tender cash payments to any participating content publisher. Its model enables users to divvy monthly subscription fees as donations awarded to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice.
Sunde tells the BBC, ‘We want to encourage people to share money (more…)

You probably won’t be watching a toppled ACC powerhouse beat up on a erstwhile FBS team. But you should. Students of East Carolina — AT THE DIRECTION OF THEIR ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, NO LESS — are going to be dressing up as pirates in the world’s first (and hopefully not last) “Pirate Out.”

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angry tapir writes “The Pirate Bay should be closed, and if it isn’t, two of the founders will each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$71,500), according to a verdict in the Stockholm District Court. This time it’s Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg who are in the court’s crosshairs. They have been forced to shut down the site or pay the fine. The court has stated that the site will have to remain closed unless Neij and Warg are (more…)

lbalbalba writes “A Dutch court ruled today that The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works. The list is to be provided by BREIN (similair to the RIAA, in Holland), and is similar to the earlier ruling against Mininova. The defendants are given three months to comply, if not, they will face penalties of 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Earlier this year the Swedish Parliament passed the IPRED law, making it easier for copyright holders to obtain file-sharers’ details from ISPs. In the months that passed, no music and movie sharers were sued. Instead, the first IPRED case dealt with pirated ebooks, but this case has now been thrown out by the Appeal Court.

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pharazon writes “Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the prospective buyer of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has been sued in the Stockholm District Court for bankruptcy due to an unpaid debt of up to 1.4 million SEK (Swedish Crowns, roughly 200k USD). The issuer is GGF’s trading partner, Advatar Systems. GGF was recently de-listed from the Aktietorget.se equity market due to financial and reporting failures, but was able to re-list later. The Swedish (more…)