Swedish media are reporting that more than 10 studios, including
Disney, Warner Brothers, Colombia Pictures and Universal, have
filed papers at Stockholm District Court demanding that the site be
shuttered.
The Pirate Bay hosts no copyright infringing material itself but
does host links to the location of files, many of which are
infringing copies of media such as songs, television programmes and
films.
Site administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter
Sunde and backer Carl Lundstrom were sentenced to a year in prison
and fined a collective £2.5 million in April.
"We’ve been forced to seek a court order demanding that they
stop the spreading of … roughly 100 films and television
programmes," the firms' Swedish lawyer Monique Wadsted told
Sweden's English-language news outlet The Local.
"[The four convicted men have] been sentenced to prison for
criminal activities but haven’t stopped carrying out those
activities," Wadsted said. "What matters is that the spreading of
these works is stopped."
The court action requests the serving of an injunction to stop
the operation of the site.
It was announced last month that The Pirate Bay would be bought
by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) and turned into a legitimate
file-sharing site, but that deal looks to be in jeopardy this
week.
The company, run by Hans Pandeya, had agreed a $7.8 million
purchase of the domain name and web sites belonging to the
organisation, but the departure of a senior executive recently
hired to work on the new site has raised questions about the
deal.
Wayne Rosso, who was once president of peer-to-peer technology
company Grokster, has reportedly walked away from his
recently-created role at The Pirate Bay.
He told CNET
News that he had "very strong doubts that the funding is in
place [and that] there are other issues regarding Mr Pandeya's
credibility that trouble us greatly."
Last week a lawyer for GGF told a Dutch court hearing a
copyright infringement case that the deal is conditional on the
company's ability to turn The Pirate Bay into a legitimate
business.
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