Fans of file sharing should be well acquainted with the verdict of the trial involving The Pirate Bay founders/owners, but the fallout appears to be even more vague than the initial question: "Are torrents illegal?"
The day the verdict of "Guilty" was read, two unique happenings occurred: First, people who were afraid of being "tracked" or "linked back" to The Pirate Bay rushed and cleared out their HDs of all torrents, pending some form of announcement that "It's okay to download again"... and simultaneously, there was a flood of people going to The Pirate Bay for the very first time to see what "The largest distributor of illegal content looked like".
The owners of the site, knee-deep in it though they may be, maintain that "Regardless of the verdict, the website is still safe for our users"... further reports suggest that the FBI doesn't even *care* about Torrents, and that all investigative work is being handled exclusively by RIAA/MPAA officials who then report their findings to law enforcement agencies.
And then you have people like me, who wish to dive deeper into the verdict... the owners of "The Pirate Bay" based their entire defense (that didn't work) on the fact that the actual data contained in, say, "Super Smash Brothers Brawl.torrent" was NOT illegal... it was just data used to connect one user to another, and any illegal transmission that occurred as a result of "Super Smash Brothers Brawl.torrent" happened due to exclusive data transfer between peers.
As we now know, that defense didn't work for the gentlemen... of course, taunting the prosecution in your trial on the front page of your website for over a year probably didn't help either.
This raises the question, "Have torrents been conclusively proven, in a court of law, to be illegal... or do you believe that torrents remain unharmed, and the only crime was committed by Pirate Bay Owners for willfully facilitating illegal data transfer by not being more closely involved with the content posted on their site, implied or otherwise?"
It's the old arguement, "Guns don't kill people, people who pull the trigger do."
The day the verdict of "Guilty" was read, two unique happenings occurred: First, people who were afraid of being "tracked" or "linked back" to The Pirate Bay rushed and cleared out their HDs of all torrents, pending some form of announcement that "It's okay to download again"... and simultaneously, there was a flood of people going to The Pirate Bay for the very first time to see what "The largest distributor of illegal content looked like".
The owners of the site, knee-deep in it though they may be, maintain that "Regardless of the verdict, the website is still safe for our users"... further reports suggest that the FBI doesn't even *care* about Torrents, and that all investigative work is being handled exclusively by RIAA/MPAA officials who then report their findings to law enforcement agencies.
And then you have people like me, who wish to dive deeper into the verdict... the owners of "The Pirate Bay" based their entire defense (that didn't work) on the fact that the actual data contained in, say, "Super Smash Brothers Brawl.torrent" was NOT illegal... it was just data used to connect one user to another, and any illegal transmission that occurred as a result of "Super Smash Brothers Brawl.torrent" happened due to exclusive data transfer between peers.
As we now know, that defense didn't work for the gentlemen... of course, taunting the prosecution in your trial on the front page of your website for over a year probably didn't help either.
This raises the question, "Have torrents been conclusively proven, in a court of law, to be illegal... or do you believe that torrents remain unharmed, and the only crime was committed by Pirate Bay Owners for willfully facilitating illegal data transfer by not being more closely involved with the content posted on their site, implied or otherwise?"
It's the old arguement, "Guns don't kill people, people who pull the trigger do."
