Despite some early fumbling by the prosecution, a judge in Sweden handed down a guilty verdict today in the case against The Pirate Bay, the popular BitTorrent search site. The four founders, who still seem to think this is a big joke, each face one year of jail time and a $3.6 million fine. The site will continue to function for now as they appeal the decision.
Even though the Pirate Bay does nothing more than point to other places on the Web where people can find BitTorrent files, including both legal and illegal downloads of music, movies, and other content, the court ruled that the Pirate Bay assisted in wholesale copyright infringement. Nobody should really be surprised by this ruling. In the past, companies such as Napster and Grokster got into trouble in U.S. courts for similar types of “vicarious infringement” and “inducement” to infringe.
The Pirate Bay may get all the headlines, but BitTorrent directory Mininova continues to grow. Stats from the site above (some are public, some via a non-published link) show the site is quickly racing towards 5 billion downloads after having only passed 4 billion February 18.
On comparison, Mininova comes out ahead on traffic. The Pirate Bay doesn’t offer a download figure, only concurrent users, with the site having passed the 10 million user mark in January. Both Alexa and comScore rank Mininova in front of The Pirate Bay, Alexa ranks The Pirate Bay at 101 to Minivova’s 52. comScore records over 30 million monthly page views for Mininova to Pirate Bay’s 24 million.
The break down of what is being downloaded is interesting. Video (movies and TV) make up 60% of the downloads on Mininova vs 19.55% for music. TV Shows are the most popular category at 38.7%; if we presume the music industry is broken based on illegal downloading, wouldn’t the demand for TV shows also demonstrate that the TV business is in trouble as well, even as services like Hulu try to offer a legal alternative?
One thing that can be taken away from these stats: that BitTorrent isn’t going away, its general usage and acceptance in the community is accelerating despite attempts by the RIAA and others to harass users.
(thanks to Ashley Smith for the tip)
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