Now this is interesting: with the arrival of a demand for some $4.5 million in damages, one of the founders of Pirate Bay has come up with an innovate method of paying it. Gottfrid Svartholm has set up something called internet-avgift which encourages ordinary Internet users who are friendly to the Pirate Bay cause to donate towards the cost of that fine. In fact, the system enables them to send those donations directly to the law firm which represented the music companies during the trial.

You might think that is all well and good, until you get to the detail. In this case the very small detail, because those people are encouraged to donate very small sums indeed, certainly a lot less than a dollar. The idea being that far from benefitting from these donations, the music companies will end up spending more in order to handle the donations that each is actually for. In other words, every donation made will end up costing them money.

Think of it as being a Distributed Donation of Dollars attack.

According to Blog Pirate the bank account where payments are made "has only 1000 free transfers, after which any transfers have a surcharge" for every donation, meaning that after the first 1000 donations each will cost them money. The same source also points out that "if after paying the internet-fee you determine that your payment was erroneous, Swedish law states that you can request the money back, putting an additional load on Danowsky’s law firm."