|
King Kong defence
|
|
The King Kong defence is a legal strategy employed by Carl Lundström's attorney while defending him in The Pirate Bay criminal proceedings in Sweden in 2009. The quote, translated from Swedish, was "The person responsible for uploads might as well be a user named King Kong in the jungles of Cambodia". This was an illustration of the fact that Lundström had no idea who uploaded what and could not be prosecuted for assisting copyright infringement if he had no contact with the person committing the copyright infringement and it is required by the prosecutor to show a connection. Argument Lundström's attorney, Per E. Samuelson, is in this case referring to a real user named "KingKong" whom he hypothesised could be located in Cambodia. The attorney used this scenario in an attempt to illustrate that Lundström had no control over the actions undertaken by The Pirate Bay users, not including grand digital larceny. Samuelson used the King Kong expression three times during his talk. His main objection was that although the prosecutor had said that the accused would be tried individually, during his talk the prosecutor had not once referred to them individually, but always as "them", "they" or "Pirate Bay". The defence was making the point that the persons behind The Pirate Bay could not be held collectively responsible for a crime committed by those who are actual identifiable individuals that upload the copyrighted material, for example, called King Kong. Carl Lundström cited the EU directive 2000/31/EG from 8 June 2000 that is incorporated into Swedish law which makes it clear that service providers are not responsible for the contents of information passing through the site and, furthermore, that one cannot reasonably expect service providers to be aware of these contents. He also cited the fact that Pirate Bay traffic - the .torrent files - does not consist of copyrighted intellectual property. Popularisation The term "King Kong defence" was quickly popularised by use in online blogs, micro-blogs, file-sharing news feeds, and in media reports on the Pirate Bay Trial.<ref name="SvMetro090218" /> A reference has been made to how the King Kong defence reminds them of the unbeatable Chewbacca Defense meme.<ref name="TorrentFreak" /> 
|
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Main Menu
| Home |
| Articles |
| Search |
| Submit Article |
| Contact Us |
| Donate to Wikibin |
