TPB: Reflections in the Interim

And clearing up a few misunderstandings.

Get It Try It

√ Carl Lundström backed out of discussions of partial ownership in TPB not because his legal advisers told him TPB would soon be illegal but because there was a risk it could be. The consequences for Lundström would be more than for the others as Lundström has a 'prior': he was involved in an altercation outside the Stockholm nightclub Engelen where he and his friends came to help a group who were being attacked by immigrants from Chile, something that also seems to have sparked Lundström's anti-immigration political activity.

√ The other three in TPB - Neij, Svartholm, Sunde - were also aware of the new law and also consulted legal advisers. As if. And their conclusion has been their operations are fully legal. Unless they were driven by a kamikaze type of zeal in the matter - or a cold calculation they could make enough money to offset a conviction - then they fully believed (and believe today) what they're doing is perfectly legal.

√ There are precedents in earlier Swedish court cases indicating links to 'illegal' materials are not in themselves illegal.

√ Swedish trials are relatively sober affairs. No one prances around in front of an elevated judge's bench like in The Practice. Everybody gets a seat and it's a bit like a 'round table'. And when you speak to the court you don't stand up. You just sit there and try to behave in a mature way.

√ The court officers (counterpart to judges in other countries) are not practicing solicitors.

√ If you bust an organisation like TPB and take all their servers and take all the servers belonging to other organisations found at their hosting provider then you're some sort of banana republic.

√ If you bust an organisation like TPB and if three years later you still officially refuse to return the property of innocent parties then you're deliberately sending a message: 'fear us because - as you can see - you have no rights'.

√ The Swedish policeman Jim Keyser is nowhere to be found. Keyser was given a leave of absence from the Swedish police to work on behalf of (and salaried by) Warner Bros after the bust. No serious inquiries have been made into his whereabouts although it's patently clear both Roswall and the plaintiff counsel are in the loop. People have facetiously suggested he might be Keyser Söze.

√ Keyser was picked up by Warner Bros (presumably through Wasted) already on 21 January 2008 before charges against TPB were formalised. Keyser had completed his investigation of TPB much earlier. It's therefore been suggested his employment by Warner Bros was a 'reward' for his assistance in the earlier stages of the case.

√ One of Keyser's first assignments as an employee of Warner Bros was to serve court documents to Gottfrid Svartholm. And he used police information to find him, then switched uniforms to serve the documents.

√ Keyser was also expected to be the chief witness for the prosecution.

√ Roswall's been aware of this blatant conflict of interest but declared he wasn't interested in looking further into the matter. Yet Keyser was not called as a witness and presumably is sitting at his old desk again with the Swedish police.

√ The media have continually attempted to reach Keyser but without success.

√ The methods of the Hollywood media giants are well known today but not much is known about what Henrik Pontén's 'Anti-Pirate Bureau' has been up to. Pontén and his friends were behind the Banhnof Affair. Pontén and his colleagues paid a hacker to swamp the Bahnhof servers with copyrighted materials, then contacted the police and arranged for a bust. Bahnhof was Sweden's first independent Internet provider, founded in 1994.

√ The Bahnhof bust was formally supported by Universal, EMI, and Sony.

√ Bahnhof were an Internet provider only - they didn't have torrent services.

√ Pontén had a salaried infiltrator inside Bahnhof for over two years tasked with finding out what was on a particular server belonging to a recently employed network engineer.

√ Pontén and his people knew about the server for years. Presumably there wasn't anything particularly controversial about it. So Pontén hired on 'Rouge' in the end to fill the server with copyrighted materials so they could bust Bahnhof anyway.

√ Bahnhof's logs showed Rouge responsible for 68,111 file operations to three Bahnhof servers (Arctic Connection, Enigma, Infinite Power) representing most of the movies and games released in Sweden in 2004. Pontén supplied Rouge with the hard copy sources for these uploads.

√ Pontén also sent computer hardware (servers) for over $2500 to Bahnhof for colocation so Rouge would have room for all the files he was to upload.

√ Pontén assisted Roswall in the TPB trial and was accused of harassing professor Wallis.

√ Roswall, Pontén, Danowsky, and Wasted - together with Roswall's forensic team - fully believed up until and through the first day of the trial that TBP were somehow 'manufacturing' complete copies of copyrighted works that were stored on the TPB servers. This despite the fact Roswall had these servers in his possession for nearly three years.

√ IFPI spearhead John Kennedy admitted twice under oath he has no clue how torrent sites work.

√ Roswall made it clear in his opening remarks he sees the Internet itself as a great evil. Wasted stated she believes Bram Cohen invented BitTorrent for the express purpose of stealing copyrighted materials.

√ Kennedy believes every thwarted torrent download will result in the sale of a physical CD or DVD.

√ Svartholm claimed most of the 'bulk' of the prosecution case was repetitive so 'Miss Monique Wasted over there could pick up her - what was it? $400/hour from Hollywood'.