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Peter Sunde, one of the founders of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker site, has been confirmed as a keynote speaker for iWeek 2009. Sunde’s keynote speech is sure to be an enlightening insight into modern copyright and digital culture.
iWeek, organised by the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) and UniForum SA (the co.za administrators), is the premier Internet conference and exhibition in South Africa. It is to be held this year from 2 – 4 September at The Forum at the Dimension Data Campus in Bryanston, Johannesburg.
The Pirate Bay bills itself as “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The Pirate Bay case was a watershed moment in the ongoing battle between big media companies trying to protect their copyrighted materials and people who download copyrighted songs, films and games through unauthorised channels.
Peter Sunde was one of the four individuals charged for, and convicted of, promoting copyright infringement through the torrent tracking website in The Pirate Bay joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden. All four were found guilty, and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of about 2.7 million Euros between them. The defendants have appealed the verdict. The judge in the Pirate Bay copyright case has been accused of bias, after he was found to be a member of a copyright protection group, while the replacement judge was removed for the same reason.
iWeek, now in its eighth year, attracts speakers, exhibitors and attendees from a broad spectrum of the most important players in South Africa’s telecommunications industry. Representatives from Internet service providers, product resellers, vendors, network operators, telecom end-users, government, the ICT-focused legal fraternity and regulators will assemble at iWeek 2009 to discuss the latest new trends, challenges and opportunities emerging in the telecom arena.
