There has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ’sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day.

What has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker. Many of the screenshots being used clearly state there is no connection to the tracker. Additionally, prosecutor Håkan Roswall didn’t adequately explain the function of DHT which allows for so called “trackerless” torrents.

The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.

This has resulted in prosecutor Håkan Roswall having to drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.

The defense was happy to see that already half of the charges were dropped during the morning session of the second day. “This is a sensation. It is very rare to win half the target in just one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor took strong note of what we said yesterday,” said defense lawyer Per E Samuelson.

Peter Althin, representing Peter Sunde said, “It is clear that this is an advantage for the accused.”

“EPIC WINNING LOL,” Peter himself later commented on Twitter.

During the morning session it was mostly prosecutor Håkan Roswall talking. Among other things he explained in detail how email works (made no mistakes there). Several details on the hardware that was taken during the raid in 2006 were discussed, as well as invoices and email conversations about server costs.

After the lunch break, around 1:30pm the court decided to end the day early. Tomorrow morning the prosecution will continue to build (or break) their case and on Thursday the defense will have its say.

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The day started this morning at 08:30, with Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (aka Anakata), Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (aka Brokep) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) arriving at the court with the S23K bus. The bus will operate as their press-center in the weeks to come. Outside the court were several Pirate Bay supporters waving Pirate Flags.

The trial began roughly half an hour later. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall read out the charges that can be best summarized as “commercial copyright infringement”. The plaintiffs are Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal. Lundström’s lawyer pointed out that the prosecutor may have drawn up some charges incorrectly. Interestingly, Lundström is the only one of the defendants with two lawyers, one of which is a copyright expert.

Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter stated their defense. They all pleaded not guilty.

Roswall then went on to present the claims of the media outfits, and described how The Pirate Bay works, with a little bit of history. He went on till the lunch break, but meanwhile Rick Falkvinge of the Pirate Party couldn’t resist accessing The Pirate Bay site from his seat in the courtroom.

The prosecution said that TPB was aimed at Swedish users until late 2004, when Fredrik had contact with Carl Lundström. They say Lundström helped them develop the project by donating funds and resources to enable the growth of the site.

The prosecution suggested that The Pirate Bay was a commercial organization, with Carl Lundström as a shareholder and financier of the company.

They also said that The Pirate Bay investigated the possibility of moving to Argentina after concerns over changes in Swedish copyright law during 2005. The prosecution claimed there were plans with Carl Lundström to set up a company in British Virgin Islands.

Discussion ensued over the advertising on The Pirate Bay site, and the involvement of one Daniel Oded and companies Random Media and Transworld Advertising.

Following the lunch break, proceedings continued with prosecutor Håkan Roswall failing to start up his computer. For several minutes, listeners of the live audio could hear mouse-clicks as Roswall, who earlier claimed to be an expert on computer crimes, tried to get his PowerPoint presentation on the screen. He was eventually ordered by the judge to stick to his papers and continue.

Information was presented about various movie, music and game downloads co-ordinated by The Pirate Bay before the raid in 2006. Roswall further discussed the total number of seeds and peers on the tracker, all part of the evidence that was previously gathered by the plaintiffs. During the afternoon, Peter Sunde sent a message;

“How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We’re winning so hard.”

Peter points out that the prosecutor is having difficulty working out the difference between megabits and megabytes.

The case was adjourned around 4pm, and will continue tomorrow morning.

Oh and keep in mind, Amazon and TMPEnc are the property of their respective owner, I am in no way affliated with those companies or names..

With that said…  continue on! (at your own risk) .. ( BELOW THE ADVERTISEMENT IS THE READMORE LINK )

Why would you want to do this? well primarily for backup purpsoses .. Say you download a movie from Amazon and Amazon goes out of business due to our tragic economic situation, or your computer crashes and you can’t afford to buy internet to re-download the movie due to the economic situation.. yadda yadda, you should be entitled to a hard copy back up of your purchase..  Some might also use this to download the much cheaper rental version of the movie from Amazon and then burn it to a DVD to own and watch whenever we want to, while this should work … it’s morally wrong, so of course you wouldn’t do such a thing!

So what do you need?

Update: I was told that the link in #1 below contains a virus, but I’ve not been able to confirm that. I attempted to verify and did not detect a virus myself, I can say it’s something many use, and continue to use on a daily basis.

1. Windows Media Player 10, last time I did my homework, WMP 11 does not work. If you installed WMP11 – need help? browse this link and then come back.
2. You will need a copy of FairUse4WM, which you can also find by clicking the link I gave you, need it again? ok here it is .. come on back when you’re done.
3. You will need a video conversion software, I personally prefer TMPEnc Authoring Works 4, acquire it how ever you wish .. that’s what this guide uses.

So now you should have Media Player 10 installed, and a copy of FairUse4WM .. if your downgrade instructions told you to delete your DRM folders then you no longer have authorization to your movies that you currently have! it’s not really an issue, launch amazon unbox and doublt click on the video .. it will tell you that it’s obtaining the license, you may get a message saying try back later… ignore it, just click on all your movies and proceed… once you’ve done that your keys will be restored.

Now you launch FairUse4WM and browse to your movies folder, select one and proceed through the steps … remember where you save out the un-protected file.

You can test your movie by playing it with something like VLC media player .. if it works, you successfully stripped the DRM from the movie and can move on to the process of backing up to DVD.

1. Launch TMPEnc and click on “Start a New Project”
2. Select “From a file”
3. Browse to your DRM free movie and open it
4. Click “Do not create now” – If you do create a clip, you will risk audi sync issues that are a pain to correct
5. The clip settings window will come up, just click “OK” at the bottom
6. On the left of the screen you will see “Track 1″ and below that a “Settings” button .. click it
7. You can rename your track to the name of the movie.
8. Click the audio tab
9. For “Encoder mode”, select “Re-encode as below if necessary”
10. Leave audio stream to Dolby Digital, if it isn’t in Dolby Digital, change it so that it is and click OK
11. Choose “Menu” from the top and select No Menu, or if you want, create one .. but menu designing is out of the scope of this guide.
12. Once you have your menu figured out, go to the Simulation menu and play it, wait till you can see some talking going on so you can make sure your audio is in sync.. if you did everything I said, it should be!  Don’t use the fast forward options to skip ahead, just be patient.
13. Select the “Output” menu option and change your target size, if you’re using a standard DVD set it to 4.7 GB
14. Check the box to have it write to the media disc after completion
15. Click “Writer Settings” and make sure you’ve chosen the right drive and that a blank DVD is in there..
16. Click “Start Output” … and wait for about an hour or so, depending on the speed of your system ..

Once you’ve done it once or twice it’ll seem like cake … back up your media and store it in a safe place, don’t share it will your pals or anything else illegal like burning rentals for the purpose of keeping it.

Happy viewing!