Four webmasters jailed
A Swedish court has convicted four men linked to the popular Pirate Bay file-sharing site of breaking Sweden’s copyright law. It bills itself as “the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” and is ranked as the 108th most popular website by Alexa Internet.
The 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 ($3.6 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. The site has become the entertainment industry’s enemy No. 1 after successful court actions against file-swapping sites such as Grokster and Kazaa.
The main legal point made throughout the trial:
The Pirate Bay is a mere search engine and repository of user-uploaded content. It hosts no copyrighted files. All file transfers are between the machines of the end-users, and they never pass through Pirate Bay servers.
Carl Lundström’s lawyer said that the very Internet infrastructure was at issue in the case; all sorts of sites and services that are completely legal—such as Google—link to at least some infringing content, or allow users to upload such material.
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April 17, 2009 at 11:52 am -
yeah, but what about the writers and musicians eh?
they are havin’ their stuff nicked aren’t they, you know, creative licence and that.
and, hell, Sony and Warner Bruvvers and Columbia are, like, only trying to make ends meet like aren’t they, hey??
the big music comanies are spotless when it comes to rippin’ people off cos they only charge like £15 foe a cd that cost 50p to make innit?
no justice in the uk and no justice in the world – we should fight global injustice by bombing all major corporations in the world and giving all their monies to the little people, right!
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April 17, 2009 at 11:59 am -
Thats the directors of every search engine screwed, and every blog, because this is establishing the legal principle that the owners of the site are responsible for every thing that is put on there whether by the owners or not.
The EU must be overjoyed.
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April 17, 2009 at 12:14 pm -
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April 17, 2009 at 12:22 pm -
Thanks Anna, spotted it just before you posted. So Sweden still ok for lots of sometimes nasty shagging, but trying to stop content piracy. Not a hope. Among many others Elton and Cliff will just have to make do with the £millions they have in their pink piggy banks! I am going to download this morning just to prove my point.
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5
April 17, 2009 at 12:26 pm -
Wowee. This has caused a great deal of comment in the music/entertainment (?) internet business. What about all that free porn?
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April 17, 2009 at 1:40 pm -
A very dangerous precedent indeed.
Events seem to have shifted up a gear across the board…..
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April 17, 2009 at 1:46 pm -
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April 17, 2009 at 2:03 pm -
And we would all lose out as a result AR. This is worrying but not that worrying. The fact that a Swedish court has ruled in favour of the entertainment could be the start of the slippery slope but I doubt it. As I have mentioned on here before; the internet always finds a way. There is a newish system that has been around almost as long as Torrents which I am not going to name here for fear of it being targeted earlier than it need by the Bentley driving, 15 house owning, coke snorting, private jet renting, artist raping entertainment industry that has been working for years without drawing the attention of the authorities. If they do somehow manage to take down the torrent network (which I seriously doubt) there is another ready to take over at a moments notice and yet more in the development stage.
People I know still use torrents mainly when they have missed an episode from a series they watch on TV and don’t want to be confused the next week. These sites which you can view here http://torrents.to (type something into the search field and you get a drop down list of different sites to search, inc. the Pirate Bay) simply host an identity file which allows internet users worldwide to connect with each other and share small pieces of an album or movie. It is these people who are guilty of copyright infringement not the Pirate Bay or others. We, sorry, they are the ones that should be prosecuted all 20million of them but that would cost too much of the entertainment industries hard earned cash so they are attacking a bottle neck in the system. It will never work: there are too many people who are prepared to break the law to side-step the extortionate amounts of money we are asked to pay to watch the latest movie or listen to the latest album. I have watched material downloaded by torrent but I also pay my TV licence and a £40 subscription to SKY TV not to mention the millions of adverts I have watched over the years. I have paid to see the latest episode of lost when it comes out and at my leisure rather than having to be at home when it is on. I say good luck to the people pursuing these convictions for copyright theft they will have to hire an army of lawyers the likes of which the world has never seen and build a prison bigger than England to contain us all.
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April 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm -
“there are too many people who are prepared to break the law to side-step the extortionate amounts of money we are asked to pay to watch the latest movie or listen to the latest album. I have watched material downloaded by torrent but I also pay my TV licence and a £40 subscription to SKY TV not to mention the millions of adverts I have watched over the years.”
Zak – Amen to that!
It’s a shame this has already become a black and white issue in discussions elsewhere. I fully support artists being fairly recompensed for their work. However, the last people that current IP and copyright legislation protect is the artists – especially the smaller ones. I, like you, object to paying for all of the additional, unnecessary, machinery and chicanery in the production, distribution and broadcast monopolies. Their time is up. They know it. We know it.
I wish they would just bow out gracefully.
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April 17, 2009 at 4:41 pm -
Nope. Kicking, screaming and foaming at the mouth it would seem. But then wouldn’t you fight to defend a source of such easy money?
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