Pirate Bay founders jailed for copyright offences
April 19, 2009
By Niklas Magnusson
The Pirate Bay's four Swedish founders were sentenced to jail for helping consumers illegally download online music and films, handing the entertainment industry a victory in the battle to protect copyrights.
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstroem were given jail sentences of one year each by a Stockholm district court yesterday. The court ordered the defendants to pay compensation and damages of 30 million kronor (R32.18 million), less than the 100 million kronor claimed by prosecutors. The defendants said they would appeal.
The ruling is the industry's biggest triumph since successful lawsuits against Napster, Kazaa and Grokster. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) estimates 95 percent of all downloaded music is pirated.
"It is a serious offence, marked by serious sentences, and I think it will surprise many in the file-sharing community as many of them don't deem it to be a crime at all," said Mark Young, an associate at Covington & Burling in London. "It will cause a ripple among the file-sharing community."
Pirate Bay is the largest file-sharing site using BitTorrent software, which allows users to download and share files in 34 languages for free, according to IFPI. Pirate Bay said the site was a network where users put up content to share with other users and that there was no copyrighted material on the site.
Pirate Bay had 22 million simultaneous users in February.
Content owners have successfully sued to stop Napster and Grokster from allowing consumers to download copyrighted material without permission. Napster began in 1999 as a free music-swapping site. Roxio purchased the company out of bankruptcy to start a paid download service and adopted its name in 2004.
The Swedish ruling will not shut the Pirate Bay website, whose most popular downloads include the television series Lost and Academy Award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire.
Entertainment companies including Vivendi and EMI spent years fighting Pirate Bay and similar sites. But the ruling does threaten the existence of Pirate Bay, founded in 2004. The site has developed a following that includes its own political party that aims to change intellectual-property laws.
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