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    Pirate Bay Founders Jailed

    Originally posted by BBC

    A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

    Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
    They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor (?2.4m) in damages.
    In a Twitter posting, Sunde said: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."
    Sunde went on to say that he "got the news last night that we lost".
    "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."
    The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
    However, the total awarded fell short of the 117m kronor (?9m) in damages and interest the firms were seeking
    Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.
    "These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.
    "The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.
    "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," he said.
    The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
    Speaking to the BBC earlier this week, Sunde said that there was no difference between us and Google."
    "The Pirate Bay will continue. Nothing is going to happen if we lose, for a multitude for reasons, not least because we will immediately appeal," he said.
    A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.
    "That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

    Political issue
    Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".
    "This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.
    "There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.
    "Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."
    The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.
    Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.
    No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.
    bbc.co.uk

    #2
    Fair play to them, they have massive balls for how they have conducted themselves for the last few years.

    Like clowns dancing towards a cliff, some may say.

    Comment


      #3
      Sorry to be a pedant but how is this a gaming headline?

      Surely one for the off topic section?

      Comment


        #4
        I'm glad they got banged up. Claiming innocence by saying they only provided the infrastructure is a rubbish defence. Calling the site 'Pirate Bay' probably didn't help their cause.

        It won't change anything though. People with no ethics will still download stuff and other people will still provide the means for them to do so.

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          #5
          I did this exact subject for my university dissertation. I do not agree that these men should have been jailed, though at the same time they were aiding in the copyright breach. As they said in the statement, i feel the wrong people were convicted. After all if the files were not being hosted they would have nothing to link to.

          The reasearch i did showed that people were willing to pay for easily obtained, legal content, as long as it was resonablly priced and easy to get hold of. I think the major companies have not worked out how to make money from the internet and that is not really our fault.

          However things seam to be moving in the right direction on the music side with spotify and itunes, lets hope something happens on the movie/tvshow side. As for gaming, i think Nintendo and Apple are on the money with the stores they have for their respective devices. It is easier to purchase a game from the store, than it would be to ever install a rogue copy. People are not going to mind spending a few quid on a pick up and play game, which you can install anywhere with a wifi signal. You maybe on the train and looking for something to do and this is where the ease of downloading these titles comes into play as your never far away from a wifi hotspot.

          Comment


            #6
            Lets be honest the media companys fighting the likes of the Pirate Bay just lost big time, the site will stay and all the free advertising about this case on the worlds major media networks is going to cause an explosion of new users.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by bash View Post
              Sorry to be a pedant but how is this a gaming headline?

              Surely one for the off topic section?
              This.

              edit: now moved. Thanks mods
              Last edited by Spatial; 17-04-2009, 12:22.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by huxley View Post
                Lets be honest the media companys fighting the likes of the Pirate Bay just lost big time, the site will stay and all the free advertising about this case on the worlds major media networks is going to cause an explosion of new users.
                I know, how can they lose and not be ordered that the site is shut down?!!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by The Mole View Post
                  I did this exact subject for my university dissertation. I do not agree that these men should have been jailed, though at the same time they were aiding in the copyright breach. As they said in the statement, i feel the wrong people were convicted. After all if the files were not being hosted they would have nothing to link to.
                  They are a big part of the system though. Without sites like Pirate Bay, file sharing wouldn't be as big as it is. It's a fair point to say that they were not solely responsible, but that isn't the same thing as saying the wrong people were jailed. They are responsible for their part and they rightly (imo) got jailed for it.

                  The reasearch i did showed that people were willing to pay for easily obtained, legal content, as long as it was resonablly priced and easy to get hold of. I think the major companies have not worked out how to make money from the internet and that is not really our fault.
                  There's a huge amount of research that shows that what people say they would do and what they would actually do bare no relation to one another. iTunes has been around for years, yet music piracy is worse than it has ever been.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    That's because iTune:

                    1. charges way too much for music
                    2. the quality is too poor.
                    3. Restrictive DRM up til recently

                    If they got their pricing right (and the music industry needs to be in on this too) then they'd do much better.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      What about the officers of ISPs? You would agree to them being jailed too?

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                        #12
                        It seems that they only did it to protect people from the multi-million dollar companies which I think is nice.

                        Perhaps the million dollar profits made each year by the company running the site should be given to the same people they are trying so hard to protect from all those disgusting capitalist companies?

                        Are they still trying to buy a country? I'd love them to do that as they'd soon discover how difficult it is to run a country, even one that small. I'd be happy to put money on their country collapsing within the first year or ending up having far more draconian laws than the ones they are sacrificing so much to protect the world from.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by FullSpecWarrior View Post
                          That's because iTune:

                          1. charges way too much for music
                          2. the quality is too poor.
                          3. Restrictive DRM up til recently

                          If they got their pricing right (and the music industry needs to be in on this too) then they'd do much better.
                          iTunes do very well, but it still doesn't stop a lot of people feeling fine about paying nothing for stuff. iTunes could be a quarter of the price but still most people who download for free would continue to do so.

                          Music is a lot cheaper than it used to be and yet there is more pirating than ever. Pirating has less to do with price and more to do with the means and will to do it.

                          I've been called a 'mug' numerous times by people who can't understand why I would rather pay for stuff .

                          What about the officers of ISPs? You would agree to them being jailed too?
                          I don't know how it works, but if the ISPs know who is pirating and could chose to stop it but don't then yes they are partly guilty too.

                          If I own a hidden underground bunker and knowingly chose to rent it out to criminals to store their stolen goods, then I'm partly involved in the crime and have no right to cry when I get banged up for it.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            iTunes charges way too much for music? A tenner? That's too much for an album you'll listen to how many times?

                            The lack of value placed on good music these days is crazy. It's more likely that the drop in value is caused by pirating and the perception that it should be free than the price of music itself being the cause of piracy. It's just used as an excuse because pirates don't like to think of themselves as doing anything wrong.

                            Edit: Sorry, I should have checked prices first. Not a tenner. 8 quid.
                            Last edited by Dogg Thang; 17-04-2009, 13:04.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              I wonder if Google should be taken to court now because you can find plenty of pirate material using that as well... there's a great couple of music sites I use called Seeqpod and Sad Steve that work looking for music only. Helped find MP3s of some reasonably obscure tracks in the past.

                              And if TPB doth fall in the future, then another one will only spring up in its place... discounting all the other torrent sites still out there.
                              Lie with passion and be forever damned...

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