The Artful Jurist

Avast, ye lubbers, and batten down the hatches for a swashbuckling battle over copyright infringement on the Internet. A Swedish file-sharing web site, called the Pirate Bay, is on trial in Stockholm on charges that it’s helping people illegally download videos, music, and literature.

Big name entertainment companies such as Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, MGM, and Columbia Pictures are among those prosecuting four people in connection with the Pirate Bay allegations.

Sony is also among the plaintiffs. What’s interesting about that is that, years ago, Sony was the defendant in a case where entertainment giants accused it of aiding and abetting copyright infringement through the sale of the Sony Betamax VCR. The winning defense back then was that the Betamax had other non-infringing uses and was not designed specifically to aid people in breaking the law.

Well, the Pirate Bay operators are making a similar claim now. The web site doesn’t actually house any of the copyright protected material. But, rather, it offers the technical opportunity for site users to swap such things amongst each other.

Of course, the “We don’t make people break the law” argument didn’t help Napster.