Tenenbaum, a graduate student from Boston admitted to downloading and sharing 30 songs in 2004, faced a fine up to $4.5 million – $150,000 per infringement. After a week long trial the jury eventually decided to award the RIAA $22,500 per song based on “willful infringement” mounting up to a total fine of $675,000 for Tenenbaum.

From the start it was clear that the only thing that the jury had to decide on would be the the size of the fine. The fair use defense was thrown out a few hours before the trial started, which shut down the only escape route left.

Tenenbaum’s defense team, headed by Harvard Professor Charles Nesson and his law students, were left powerless. “Undoubtedly, we were a creative and nontraditional legal team. But going into trial, we were stripped of all our attempts to mitigate Joel’s liability, so today’s outcome has been in the cards all week,” student Debbie Rosenbaum wrote.

This is the second win in little over a month for the RIAA. In June, Jammie Thomas-Rasset lost her retrial against the RIAA and was ordered to pay $1.92 million for the 24 songs she shared via Kazaa.

In total, the RIAA has spent over a million dollars on this case alone, to set an example to the millions of people who share files every day. Time will tell whether or not the verdict will have any impact at all, aside from ruining a student’s life and alienating a few million music fans.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Earlier this week Wayne Rosso cast doubt over the ability of GGF CEO Hans Pandeya’s ability to raise the funding for the Pirate Bay takeover. In a response to these allegations the board of GGF has revealed that there is more interest than some had expected.

One of the parties that offered a 2 million dollar investment in the acquisition is John Fanning who operated Napster, one of the first mainstream file-sharing applications. In addition, the board revealed that Fanning offered GGF 10 million dollars for The Pirate Bay itself.

John Fanning discussed his plans with Hans Pandeya in London but they did not reach an agreement. The 10 million bid on the site and its assets has been rejected and thus far there is no official deal closed on the 2 million investment offer.

In addition to Fanning’s offer, GGF has also received an informal bid of 16 million dollars for The Pirate Bay by an unnamed Russian company. This offer has also been declined, GGF’s board announced.

“The basis for a legal site has been placed and contracts are expected to be concluded shortly with a leading player in the entertainment industry. The development of the company is very positive, and goes as planned,” Hans Pandeya said in a comment.

TorrentFreak contacted Napster’s John Fanning to find out what his plans are for the site, if he would be in the position to acquire it. He might be interested in working out a deal of his own if GGF’s acquisition of the BitTorrent tracker fails after all. We haven’t heard back from him yet, but we will update the article as soon as do.

Post from: TorrentFreak

If the seas of BitTorrent have proven a little choppy for the crew of The Pirate Bay in the last few years, the last few weeks have seen some of the most turbulent waters so far.

They have the fallout from the planned sale to Global Gaming Factory to contend with, a new lawsuit initiated by US movie studios, and yesterday they lost a Dutch court case in their absence. From that action they now face the prospect of huge fines in The Netherlands if they don’t disable that country’s access to their site within 10 days.

Today brings news of yet another upcoming lawsuit against Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, even though they say they disposed of The Pirate Bay a little over 3 years ago.

Italy’s FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) say they will be suing the three and seeking damages in excess of 1 million euros.

In August 2008, The Pirate Bay was made inaccessible in Italy after ISPs were ordered to block its domain. However, The Pirate Bay appealed and eventually won the court case. In October the Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The case is now awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court of Appeal.

This new Italian legal action is based on evidence collected during The Pirate Bay proceedings in Bergamo last year – evidence which, incidentally, was supplied by FIMI to the prosecutor in the first instance.

Referring to the planned sale of TPB to GGF and their basis of claim, President of FIMI, Enzo Mazza, said: “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”

Peter Sunde’s Italian lawyers, Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Paolo Micozzi, told TorrentFreak that under Italian law, an entity seeking compensation for damages, when there is an ongoing criminal indictment, could either file a civil action outside of the proceedings (i.e, a normal civil action for damages), or bring his claim for damages within the criminal procedure as a damaged party.

“In any case, nothing has been notified to us (as lawyers of Peter Sunde) so far,” Gallus told TorrentFreak. “I gather they have announced their intentions before starting the procedure.”

Post from: TorrentFreak