Probable cause is not the same as proof of guilt. Wikipedia quotes a definition of the former as "a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true" - which is a much lower test than proof of guilt.

And it's pretty much the same test for extradition from the UK, which requires "reasonable grounds to suspect" (or a national equivalent). Whether a US judge is more likely than a UK one to find an excuse not to extradite one of her own citizens is another matter.

In the UK, people have been convicted and/or found liable on the basis of conspiracy to defraud and/or encouraging or facilitating criminal copyright infringement.

At trial, one person has been convicted on the basis of conspiracy to defraud. There is no "facilitating copyright infringement" law per se. That case was a private prosecution and is pending appeal (something like 20-30 different grounds), which will hopefully be heard before FACT Ltd can do too much bullying on the basis of it (it was a very dodgy conviction; the judge instructed the jury that what he was doing was illegal because what he was doing was illegal, basically). The only other criminal cases that have gone to trial resulted in acquittals or dismissal of charges.

As for civil cases, there's really only the Newzbin 1 case, which found a company running a website was liable for copyright infringement mainly due to the extra steps they took to help their premium members. In any case, "contributory copyright infringement" isn't the right term; you're looking at either direct (or secondary, but that usually involves businesses) copyright infringement, or joint liability for someone else's infringement. There is no blanket "you were somehow involved in someone else's infringement therefore you must be liable!!" thing.

The s107(2A) offence is an interesting one - to my knowledge it has never gone to trial. While there have been a couple of summary convictions under it, they don't really count (and, to be blunt, neither do un-appealed cases at trial). It's only been in the last couple of years that the police (or rather, FACT Ltd / the BPI) have realised this is the correct offence, and before that managed to get some summary convictions under s107(1)(e) - despite it not applying.

However that is not their main purpose, and there is no reason why the courts have to treat them the same way, any more then convicting a rioter for handing out bricks at a riot means they have to convict every building site foreman in the country.

But that's not quite the way the law works; the key thing here is the "mere conduit" (and similar) principles found in the e-commerce regulations (regs 17-19). This one provides an absolute defence to a damages claim for anything done through a mere service provider - such as someone hosting a proxy.

What matters is not whether they transmit copyright information, but whether that transmittion is authorised. If my ISP helps me view the NYTimes website, I am view copyright material with authorisation.

As an aside, this isn't how the law works either. Currently you would need a licence to view the content on the NYTimes website. If you didn't have a licence, you would be liable for copyright infringement (as would oyur ISP, but for the above limitation). Fortunately, the NYTimes website includes a term saying that "You may download or copy the Content and other downloadable items displayed on the Services for personal use only, provided that you maintain all copyright and other notices contained therein." However, go beyond that - such as by viewing it at work - (and not within the scope of a statutory limitation to copyright) and you're breaking the law. There's case law on that (which, hopefully, the Supreme Court will be overturning in the next couple of months). Interestingly, this also means that were I (or someone else) to email you some content from the NYTimes website while at work, *you* would be liable for copyright infringement as soon as you download the email to read it.

Of course, if the website doesn't have an explicit licence, you have to rely on implied licences. But that can be overridden by an express one -so if you're in the UK (or England or Wales, at least) and see the phrase "All Rights Reserved" while browsing the Internet, there's a good chance you've broken the law.

Isn't copyright law fun?

Anyways, my understanding of the situation is that PPUK *isn't* breaking the law because it is not actually infringing any copyrights, nor is it authorising such an infringement, nor is within the scope of joint tortfeasance (due to acting with a common purpose to infringe copyrights). Additionally, it is covered by the "mere conduit" limitation, so at most copyright owners could get would be an injunction (but that's an equitable remedy, so there are issues with the substantial delay, a lack of proportionality, and acting in vain). If the case did go to trial, it would be rather interesting.

But it won't, because the 6 guys in question don't have the few hundred thousand pounds they need lying around. At the moment, the proxy is down. But that's the current British justice system for you - only works if you have money.

[Disclaimer: I am a member of, and work for, the Party. I am not one of the 6 members in question and so not directly involved. I am not a lawyer, but have studied copyright law in some detail.]

The BPI is a private company, whose members include (iirc) various record labels. It will own copyrights, but not any in music. However, what they will do is get some of their record labels to act as claimants for them - the BPI runs the litigation, but the record labels sign the documents (and possibly the cheques). In the first Pirate Bay case, the claimants were 9 different record labels (which doesn't sound at all like anticompetitive collusion to me...).

Sure, but how did they get the court order against the ISPs in relation to TPB?

Well for starters, there was no one present to argue the case. So no defence, no cross-examination of evidence, the court relied entirely on the BPI's numbers and claims. [There is a provably wrong statistic used in one of the Newzbin2 judgments, so it is possible for them to lie, either through accident or deliberately.] An adversarial legal system (like England's) only works when you have two sides present in the court, with equal strength. Judicial oversight alone isn't enough.

Therefore, if PPUk is facilitating this damage it would seem at least plausible that they could also be liable for this damage, or at any rate that there may be a case for it.

It is plausible and arguable, but the law (imho) doesn't quite work that way;running a neutral proxy, to aid access to a site, which allows third parties to post links, which people can follow to be able to share content, which they may be doing contrary to copyright law - is a little too remote for liability. Then there's the issue of the "mere conduit" limitation in the eCommerce Directive.

Then, even if you do get liability, there's the issue of damage. Traditionally under tort laws, damages are based on the loss - so the BPI's members would need to show that the actions of the officers actually caused some real (non-trivial) loss. Which might be rather hard.

Arguing that a person whose legally protected rights are being damaged should only be able to take out an injunction, even where the people responsible are clearly identifiable and accessible to the UK courts, seems odd.

But who is responsible? The Pirate Party? It's officers? It's members? Their ISP? The operators of the Pirate Bay? TBP's ISP? The users of TPB? The people actually sharing files? There's a reason there are limitations on liability in English law... sometimes it just isn't appropriate. As for the injunction-only approach, that comes down to both proportionality and preventing neutral "mere conduits" etc. from being liable for damages.

The Pirate Party (or rather, some of its officers) because they are "clearly identifiable and accessible" while the people doing the actual sharing are less easy to identifiable (and much harder to demonstrate damage against) but that's no reason to make them legally liable or responsible. Under that logic; it is hard to identify and get to people who graffiti walls, but as most of them use paint, and we know who makes paint, let's pursue them instead - allowing people who's property is graffitied sue paint manufacturers for their loss.

As for whether either an injunction itself is possible to obtain, that's a further complication (I would argue that it isn't as it would be disproportionate and easily frustrated). However, unless the Pirate Party manages to raise the few hundred thousand pounds necessary to defend the case, we'll probably never find out.

[Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer (yet), and am a member of, and work for, the Party. I am not directly involved in this business.]

Which precise law is the Pirate Party (or rather, its officers) breaking? Please provide either case law or a statutory reference.

This will almost certainly not see a jury (it's not a criminal case at the moment). As for the judge being biased due to the name of the Party, I really hope our judges are above that sort of thing. Plus it's not the Party, but some of its officers, being threatened.

If you think the name is a bad thing, you might want to look up the history of the term "Tory." Names are just names, some people take 'bad' names as a badge of honour.

[Disclaimer: I am a member of, and work for, the Party, but an not directly involved in this BPI business.]

LLC is a US term; the UK equivalents are Ltd, plc or LLP (perhaps). The Pirate Party hasn't already set up some sort of company, mainly because the legal/corporate status of political parties is a real mess in the UK and it could be a lot of hassle. But it's being looked into now...

[Disclaimer: I am a member of, and work for, the Party, but am not directly involved in the BPI threat.]

The pirates are *wilfully* violating the law - they are members of the Pirate Party

Are you suggesting that being a member of a political party is illegal?

As for whether or not the Party (or its officers) are breaking the law; the BPI seem to think they are, but they don't. Hence they may be going to court over it. It's far from simple.

[Disclaimer: I am a member of, and work for the Party, but am not directly involved in this business.]

The short excerpts Google shows are definitely copyrighted

They might be, they might not. Hence there is an increasing amount of case law on this (particularly the Infopaq case in the EU) as to what can actually be covered by copyright. There's certainly nothing "definite" about it.

They successfully won a court order against the Pirate Bay, and the UK Pirate Party are deliberately trying to frustrate that court order.

Minor corrections: They haven't won any court order against The Pirate Bay or its operators - they never took it to court (not that you can take a website to court). The won several (uncontested) orders against the 6 major UK ISPs.

Secondly, PPUk was running the proxy before the court orders were issued, so it wasn't that it was trying to frustrate the order - simply provide a service.

The issue of it being frivolous or in bad faith could come from the fact that it is trivially easy for the BPI to effectively shut down the PPUk proxy; from my understanding of the text of the court orders (which I tried to get hold of, but would have costed £95), they simply need to write a letter to the ISPs asking them to add the proxy to the existing block. But instead they've decided to go after the officers of the Party.

[Disclaimer: I work for PPUk, but am not involved in this mess any more, and don't know much more that what has been published.]

Yes, but to get on that list you have to be a vexatious litigant; and bringing (or threatening to bring) one case against a few people in what is a fairly grey legal area probably won't cover that.

Iirc the only felony left in the UK is the treason felony, which was last used in the UK in the 1880s.

As for the original question, this is a threatened lawsuit, not a crime. And the issue of holding individuals liable is due to the fact that political parties in the UK aren't automatically incorporated, so it is technically impossible to sue them.

The UK doesn't have SLAPP laws. In theory, frivolous lawsuits are supposed to be shut down by the judges before they get that far. While there's no real way to counter-sue, this sort of behaviour is usually dealt with through costs orders (making the side wasting the other's time pay all the other's costs).

Of course, if the BPI win (or the Party runs out of funds first), that's another matter...

Yes, but they tend to only recover 60% of their costs, and that's only after they win. But to get to that point, they have to spend £100,000 plus in costs, which the Party doesn't have right now.