Pirate Bay founders lose appeal

26 November 2010 Last updated at 09:06 ET

Three founders of The Pirate Bay have lost an appeal against a conviction for illegally sharing copyrighted content.

The Swedish appeals court upheld the 2009 ruling against the site's founders which saw them sentenced to a year in jail and heavily fined.

The ruling reduces the sentences the men face but increases fines to 46m crowns (�4.1m).

Three of The Pirate Bay's four founders were in court for the verdict. The other was too ill to attend.

The original verdict on Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom was handed down in April 2009 following a lengthy trial.

Lawyers acting for music labels and movie studios alleged that via The Pirate Bay, the four men helped people circumvent copyright controls.

The founders defended themselves by saying that The Pirate Bay did not host any pirated material directly.

The appeal court ruling will see Mr Neij serve a 10 month sentence; Mr Sunde eight months and Mr Lundstrom four months. Once Mr Svartholm Warg is fit his "criminal liability" will be tested by the appeals court.

Throughout the legal action and appeal hearing The Pirate Bay website has continued to function.

"Today's judgment confirms the illegality of The Pirate Bay and the seriousness of the crimes of those involved," said the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry in a statement.

"It is now time for The Pirate Bay, whose operators have twice been convicted in court, to close. We now look to governments and ISPs to take note of this judgment, do the responsible thing and take the necessary steps to get The Pirate Bay shut down."

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Police seek domain closure powers

26 November 2010 Last updated at 08:24 ET

The police are seeking powers to shut down websites deemed to be engaged in "criminal" activity.

The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has tabled a plan for Nominet, which oversees .uk web addresses, to be given the domain closing power.

Nominet said the idea was only a proposal and invited people to join the debate on the form of the final policy.

IT lawyers said the proposal would be "worrying" if it led to websites going offline without judicial oversight.

"It's not policy at this stage," said Eleanor Bradley, director of operations at Nominet.

She said SOCA's proposal emerged from changes made to Nominet's policy development process earlier in 2010, as well as experiences with closing down a series of criminal sites in the last 12 months.

In the proposal, SOCA pointed out that Nominet currently has no obligation to close down criminal websites. SOCA wants this changed so domains can be cancelled if law enforcement agencies deem them to be engaged in criminal activities, and inform Nominet of their conclusion.

Ms Bradley SOCA's proposal was the "very beginning of the process" to update Nominet's policies.

"We now need to get a balanced group of stakeholders together to talk about the policy and its implications," she said.

Since SOCA's proposal was posted on the Nominet site, feedback had started to come in that was helping to define who should be invited to join a formal discussion of the plan, said Ms Bradley.

She invited those to whom the proposal was relevant to get in touch. "We want to make sure the stakeholder group is balanced," she said.

No timetable has been drawn up for when the proposal would be discussed or when any resulting policy would be adopted.

"If you are going to do this, then fine, but it needs judicial oversight," said barrister and IT lawyer David Harris, adding that that conferring these powers might be better done by updating the Computer Misuse Act.

Nick Lockett, a lawyer at DLL specialising in computer law, said he was "deeply concerned" about SOCA's proposal if it meant it could act before a conviction had been secured.

"In a world of online retailing, the ability for a police officer to seize any business, whether that is blocking a domain or seizing the servers - pre-conviction or certainly pre-warrant - would be a dramatic change in the relationship between the police and the internet community," he told BBC News.

He also said the police would have to be very careful about the sites they judged to be engaged in criminal activity. Mistakes that resulted in shutting down a legitimate site would leave them open to claims for "massive damages" he warned.

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Net-dedicated satellite to launch

26 November 2010 Last updated at 05:46 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The first satellite dedicated to delivering broadband services to Europe is all set for launch.

The Hylas spacecraft is designed to fill so-called "not spots" - remote locations such as rural villages where it is currently not possible to get a fast internet connection.

The satellite will be carried into orbit on an Ariane 5 rocket.

The vehicle is expected to lift off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 1539 local time (1839 GMT).

Hylas (Highly Adaptable Satellite) is a commercial venture operated by start-up Avanti Communications of London, but the spacecraft itself incorporates technology developed with public funding through the European Space Agency (Esa).

The satellite's payload will automatically vary the amounts of power and bandwidth needed to match peaks and troughs in demand for net access across its European "footprint".

Hylas was prepared at the Portsmouth, UK, factory of EADS Astrium, Europe's largest space company, and Antrix, a commercial arm of the Indian space agency (Isro).

The 2.6-tonne spacecraft will operate in the Ka radio band and deliver broadband services to some 350,000 subscribers.

The UK government put �40m into the Hylas development programme.

It has a commitment that everyone in Britain should have access to a decent net connection by 2015.�That means a minimum of two megabits per second (Mbps).

Some three million UK homes currently fall below this standard; and across Europe, there are many millions more who cannot currently get an adequate connection through terrestrial technology.

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Hylas will be offering up to 10Mbps to its users.

"It is the first of what will be many satellites," explained Avanti CEO David Williams. "We've already got our second satellite under construction at the moment and that launches in about 15 months' time.

"That will put more capacity into the UK but also it puts new capacity into new areas in Africa and the Middle East. And then we are planning more satellites for Latin America, India and other parts of Asia."

In Europe, Avanti faces competition from the long-established Eutelsat space communications company, which is putting up its own net-dedicated Ka-band satellite for Europe, delivering 10Mbps through its Tooway service.

Eutelsat's KA-Sat is due for launch on a Russian Proton rocket on 20 December.

Astrium worked on both Hylas-1 and KA-Sat, and at one stage the two satellites were sitting inside the same Portsmouth cleanroom separated by a few metres.

Friday's Ariane will also be orbiting a telecommunications spacecraft for Intelsat. The US platform will deliver a wide range of services across Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Asia.

Intelsat-17 will be ejected by the Ariane upper-stage 27 minutes into the flight; Hylas will come out seven minutes later.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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