For a few years now, the Swedish Pirate Party has provided some hosting services to The Pirate Bay, arguing that attempts to take it down would amount to political censorship. It appears that theory may finally get tested. According to TorrentFreak, the Swedish anti-piracy group "Rights Alliance" has sent a letter threatening to take legal action against the Pirate Party if it does not stop hosting the site.
In the letter, which also targets bandwidth provider Serious Tubes, the group cites last year’s Supreme Court rejection of The Pirate Bay case as a precedent that hosting providers can be held liable for providing Internet services to file-sharing sites.
“With that decision, it was finally determined that not only those who operate illegal file sharing services, but also the Internet providers to such illegal services are committing a criminal act,” the Rights Alliance writes.
The party is figuring out how to respond. They note that, given how the original TPB trial played out, even if they believe they're strongly in the right under the law, the courts seem to toss all logic out the window as soon as someone mentions "but, piracy!" So they are reasonably concerned that a fair trial on the merits of the case would not come from this. However, it would certainly be an interesting trial, and might certainly call more attention to the issues that go beyond just the initial TPB trial. This is clearly getting into significant questions about secondary liability, especially over products that have significant non-infringing uses, and where the site itself is not hosting any of the infringing content. The whole thing remains a witch hunt by people who don't seem to understand the technology. A lawsuit against a political party may serve to highlight just how crazy this witch hunt has become.
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