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Pirate music website founders jailed
Mark Prigg, Technology Correspondent17.04.09
THE men behind one of the world's largest illegal downloading sites were today found guilty of breaking copyright law.
Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison.
They were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor (£2.4 million) to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.
The Pirate Bay provides a forum for its estimated 22 million users to freely download music, movies and computer games through so-called torrent files. Millions of files a day are exchanged using the service.
No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.
The servers are located outside Sweden, so it is unlikely today's verdict will result in them being switched off. The men pledged to appeal against the ruling. Sunde earlier claimed on Twitter that he had been leaked the verdict. He wrote: “It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.
“Nothing will happen to The Pirate Bay, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just theatre for the media.”
Music industry body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry welcomed the verdict. It estimates tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007.
Its CEO John Kennedy said: “The court has handed down a strong deterrent sentence that reflects the seriousness of the crimes. This is good news for everyone who is making a living or a business from creative activity.”
The British Phonographic Industry association's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Sites like the Pirate Bay seriously undermine investment in music and legal online services and do nothing to reward artists.
“We hope this decision will encourage British music fans to steer clear of these parasitic illegal services and support the future of British music by downloading legally.”
Reader views (4)
A terrible shame, these generous people saved many British people from lining the pockets of the American music companies who inevitably own most the music rights and equally inevitably return the profits to the US, yet another hegemony overthrown has been reinstated. Perhaps when the industry slims down and modernises rather than paying people who frankly are mostly pretentious imbeciles enormous sums of money and wasting even more on lavish lifestyles and moaning how they are not adequately rewarded for their 'artistic talent' it would deserve some more of the money although ironically it would not longer need it.
- Isocrates, London, United Kingdom
Songwriting is a gift to those who have some talent and a gift that is supposed to be treasured. It ceases to have any value if there is NO price to pay. Those who study music and the arts do so because the Almighty saw fit to endow them. If they wish to share their talent freely it should be done at their discretion and not others. There are many who have written material that is outstanding but laying in the dust on shelves and in draws because of a refusal to just throw their pearls before the swine. So judgement is brought upon all those who would otherwise have benefited. The demise of the entertainment industry, it's falling standards, are indicative of the times. But there are of course those who are satisfied the way things are. They are not very farsighted, but we do live in a buy now never pay society, and it is reflected by those in authority who set the standards. The two culprits now serving a one year sentence for copyright infringement are just the scapegoats, the snowball has already got out of control, but it will flatten us all! Including the pirates!
- R.M.Harrison, London
Haskey, I doubt you understand what this is all about..
- Mark, St Albans
" ......to one year each in prison".
They'll be out in six months for bad behaviour!
I would lock them up and throw away the key. After first giving them a good shave!
- Haskey, London SE1
