The four founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing website have been sentenced to a year in jail today after being found guilty of copyright offences. They have also been ordered to pay millions of pounds in damages to a number of record companies, including EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Bros following the court case in Sweden.
The group - Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde - were found to have assisted copyright violation by allowing people to access copyrighted files. They argued they merely provided access to legitimate technology and were not responsible for illegal downloading because they did not host any copyrighted material. Instead, they said they hosted links to file locations, in the same way illegal files can be found via search engines.
However, they were found guilty of breaking copyright law and ordered to pay £2.4m, although the entertainment companies had sought around £9 million.
Twittering about events, one of the accused Peter Sunde said the verdict was leaked to them last night: "Stay calm - Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing what so ever. This is just a theater for the media".
The group - who denied the charges - now plan to appeal. The court case is seen by some as a symbol of the current conflicts between the 'old world' of physical distribution of music and films, and the 'new world' of online digital distribution and the yet to be fully-established business models of services like Spotify (currently only licensed in certain European territories) and other subscription based services.
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Chairman John Kennedy was pleased with the verdict and said: "There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that."
Piratebay and case history on Wikipedia
Piratebay website
IFPI statement on the verdict
12:05 PM | 17/04/2009
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