Convicted Pirate Bay founders get jail and £2m fine, they call for retrial

 

This is a big story with many twists and turns so please follow us now into the labyrinth and we’ll see you on the other side!

 

On 17th April, the four co-founders of Peer to Peer torrent facilitating site The Pirate Bay were found guilty of “assisting the distribution of illegal content online” by a Swedish court and have been sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6m (£2.4m) fine.

 

Charges against the high profile site, which allows web users free access to music, film and media files without paying for content were brought by a consortium of media, film and music companies led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) .

 

A Stockholm court found the four defendants guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through The Pirate Bay, which means that they will have to pay compensation to 17 different music and media companies including the ‘Big Four’ major music groups: Sony BMG , Universal, EMI and Warner.

 

Crucially, The Pirate Bay site does not itself host audio and video files, but acts as a kind of vehicle and gateway to sharing content illegally, linking to torrents hosted elsewhere online.

 

 

The trial began on 16th February in Stockholm district court, when the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Carl Lundström, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, were put in the dock on charges of assisting copyright infringement.

 

Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay defendants have portrayed their image as that of anarchic outsiders, posting on their Twitter account and insisting that their position was to defend a popular technology rather than illegal file sharing.

 

Prosecutors failed to convince the judge that the site had distributed illegally copied files and as a result they were forced to drop the charge of “assisting copyright infringement” and focus on the lesser charge of “assisting, making available copyrighted content”.

 

Kolmisoppi went on to say in a press conference held after the verdict that the prison sentences handed down by a Swedish judge were “weird and bizarre”. He added: “Even if I had any money I would rather burn everything I own and not even give them the ashes. They could have the job of picking them up. That’s how much I hate the media industry”.

 

The decision has received a predictably warm welcome across the industry, from everyone from representatives of the IFPI to Sir Paul McCartney.

 

It then emerged last week that the convicted founding members, alongside launching formal appeal procedures would also be seeking a retrial due to claims of bias involving one of the judges involved, who has been revealed to be a member of two intellectual property organisations involved in promoting stricter copyright regimes.

 

Judge Tomas Norstrom is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright and The Swedish Association For The Protection Of Industrial Property.

 

As a result, the Swedish Court Of Appeal will now consider both the appeal and retrial applications made by the defendant’s lawyers, and decide whether to hear an appeal themselves or send the case back to the District Court for a retrial under a new judge.

 

In a truly bizarre twist, Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology recently announced that it has bought a server owned by The Pirate Bay confiscated by police last year. The museum paid the equivalent of £170 for the server and will display it in an archive of illegally copied material.

 

We get the feeling that this one is far from over so stay tuned for all new developments!

 

Tags: pirate bay