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Court finds The Pirate Bay founders guilty

PostPosted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 1:14 pm
by Ian
The people behind the other bittorrent websites better watch out. With this win, the RIAA, IFPI and MPAA will be going to be going after them all now.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090417 ... 0417152154

A Swedish court found four men guilty Friday of promoting copyright infringement by running The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top illegal filesharing websites, sentencing them to a year in prison in a landmark ruling.

The court also ordered the four -- Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem -- to pay damages of 30 million kronor (2.72 million euros, 3.56 million dollars) to the recording industry, which hailed the conviction as a symbolic victory.

"The Stockholm district court has today convicted the four people charged with promoting other people's infringement of copyright laws," the court said in a statement.

But the four vowed to appeal the verdict and take their case as high as the Swedish Supreme Court if necessary.

"We are of course going to appeal," defence lawyer Per Samuelsson told Swedish Radio.

The effect the verdict will have on the site was not immediately known, but The Pirate Bay founders vowed to carry on.

"Don't worry, nothing will change for The Pirate Bay, neither for us nor for filesharing," Sunde wrote on the community website Twitter, Swedish news agency TT reported.

A comment posted on The Pirate Bay's website read: "As in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing Hollywood ever taught us."

Representatives of the movie, music and video games industry had sought some 117 million kronor (10.6 million euros, 13.9 million dollars) in damages and interest for alleged losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

Re: Court finds The Pirate Bay founders guilty

PostPosted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 2:04 pm
by Dartman
Let's hope their appeal goes well. If they don't pull a rabbit out of the hat a lot of these places will go under then they'll probably sue even more regular folks. Getting real tired of the industry trying to bully and suing their way into making money on a outdated business model and being aided by their money and the governments that want it.