CyberLaw Blog

Archive for April 17th, 2009

Pirate Bay founders sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay £2.5 million: “Four men who founded the popular file-sharing website Pirate Bay were today
sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay £2.5 million in damages for
helping internet users download protected music, movies and computer games.”

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Pirate Bay loses trial: defendants face prison time, hefty fines: “

Co-founders will appeal decision

It’s official – the four defendants in The Pirate Bay versus entertainment industry trial have been found guilty in a Swedish court of being accessories to breaching copyright laws.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Pirate Bay accused found guilty

Swedish court sentences four co-founders of notorious download site The Pirate Bay to a year in jail and a $3.6m fine

The four co-founders of website The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of assisting the distribution of illegal content online by a Swedish court today and have been sentenced to a year in jail and a $3.6m (£2.4m) fine.

Charges against the site, which allows web users to access music, movies and TV shows without paying for them and claimed 22 million users during February, were brought by a consortium of media, film and music companies led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

A Stockholm court found the four defendants guilty of making 33 specific files accessible for illegal sharing through The Pirate Bay, which means they will have to pay compensation to 17 different music and media companies including Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Warner, MGM and 20th Century Fox.

All four have pledged to appeal against the decision though the process may take several years.

One of the defendants, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, admitted on Twitter that Pirate Bay had lost its case.

‘Stay calm – nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or filesharing what so ever. This is just a theatre for the media,’ he said.

‘Really, it’s a bit LOL. It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.’

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said: ‘We’re very pleased at the verdict of what was a very important case for us.

‘It would have been very difficult to put on a brave face if we had lost, but this verdict sends a strong educational and deterrent message.’

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

The Pirate Bay does not itself host audio and video files, but provides links to torrents hosted elsewhere on the internet.

Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay defendants have played up their image as rebellious outsiders, arriving at court in a slogan-daubed party bus and insisting that their position was to defend a popular technology rather than illegal filesharing.

Prosecutors made a major slip-up on the second day of the trial after failing to convince the judge that illegally copied files had been distributed by the site.

They were forced to drop the charge of ‘assisting copyright infringement’ and focus on the lesser charge of ‘assisting making available copyrighted content’. They had been seeking SKr115m (£9.1m) in compensation for loss of earnings due to the millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

The trial has further polarised the tech community and the music industry with both sides eagerly awaiting the result, which will be regarded as a precedent for future filesharing cases.

Supporters of The Pirate Bay held a street party in Moscow last night, with organisers saying the trial had proved that the companies behind the prosecution were ‘motivated only by their greed and inertia, want to prevent people sharing music, movies, or anything, on a purely altruistic basis’.

The chairman of the Swedish Independent Music Producers Association, Jonas Sjöström, said as the trial concluded that the consortium is ‘tired and sick of services like The Pirate Bay who have no understanding or respect for the creative community, and instead have their own financial interests at heart’.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology announced yesterday that it had bought a server owned by The Pirate Bay confiscated by police last year. The museum paid SKr2,000 for the server and will display it in its archive of illegally copied material.

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

(Via Techdirt.)

Pirate Bay Loses A Lawsuit; Entertainment Industry Loses An Opportunity: “Well, the verdict has come down in the trial against The Pirate Bay in Sweden, and it appears The Pirate Bay has been found guilty and each of the defendants has been sentenced to a year in jail and told to pay $3.6 million in damages (less than a third of what the entertainment industry asked for). There will be appeals, of course, so this particular ruling isn’t entirely meaningful, even if it’s quite disappointing. The trial did certainly include plenty of theatrics, but the core question was an important one: should a site that is, effectively, a search engine, be liable for the content that is linked from that search engine, given that it hosted no infringing works itself. It is in many ways, the same question that was raised in the US in the Grokster case, where the Supreme Court sided with the entertainment industry. It looks like this initial ruling is similar, and that’s troubling for the same reasons. The idea that a toolmaker can be liable for the actions of its users should trouble everyone — especially when that tools has plenty of legitimate uses as well.

But, of course, what happened post Grokster should give you an indication of what will happen here: basically, the entertainment industry will gleefully declare victory, and make statements about how this is a major victory against ‘piracy.’ But, in actuality, the exact opposite of that will occur. Unauthorized file sharing continues (or even increases) and it becomes that much more difficult for the legacy industries to win back customers and embrace these new, useful and efficient tools of distribution and promotion. It’s a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war. The ultimate problem, of course, is that the entertainment industry still (amazingly) thinks this is a legal issue, not a business model one. It can win as many legal battles as it wants, but in thinking it’s a legal issue, it will never recognize how its business models need to change.

The folks behind The Pirate Bay insist that the site will live on and the verdict means nothing, but it may create an inconvenience for users of the site — especially if other nations use this as yet another excuse to ban the site. The folks this will hurt the most are those content creators who actually do value The Pirate Bay — such as best selling author Paulo Coehlo, who found that ‘pirating’ his own book helped him tremendously, and who recently spoke out about what a useful tool The Pirate Bay has been. It’s a shame that because some big lumbering companies are unable to change their business models that they get to use the legal system to disrupt and annoy those who have figured it out.

In the meantime, one amusing bit that came out as this story was breaking… one of the defendants, Peter ‘brokep’ Sunde, was informed about the verdict early, and joked that: ‘It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.’ So… does that mean whoever leaked the verdict is guilty of piracy?

Post from: TorrentFreak

The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict – Guilty

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty – backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

Today, Friday April 17, the court issued its decision. Here are the main points relating to each defendant (continually updated live);

Peter Sunde (born September 13, 1978) alias ‘brokep’:

Verdict: Guilty – 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Peter Althin, brokep’s lawyer said, ‘I spoke to Peter and he wasn’t very surprised. A journalist he’d spoken to knew an hour before it was public that all four would be convicted. The verdict was leaked from the court. I have to think about what effects that can have on the sentence. It is unacceptable that the court is leaking.’

Fredrik Neij (born April 27, 1978) alias ‘TiAMO’:

Verdict: Guilty – 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000
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Gottfrid Svartholm (October 17, 1984) alias ‘Anakata’:

Verdict: Guilty – 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000

Anakata’s lawyer Ola Salomonsson said, ‘We’re appealing. It’s very surprising that the court has chosen to treat the accused as a team.’

Carl Lundström (born April 13, 1960)

Verdict: Guilty – 1 year in prison, damages to pay: $905,000
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The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as ’severe’. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

While the court did not agree with the plaintiff’s exaggerated estimates of losses, it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). This a hugely significant amount and the court has ordered that the four should pay this amount between them.

The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.

The defense put it to the judge that he had folded under intense political pressure. The judge denied this stating that the court made its decision based on the case presented to them.

At one point the judge was asked if he was concerned for his personal safety after handing down this decision. The judge said he hadn’t received any harassment and was quite surprised at the question.

While the judge won’t be getting any flowers for this verdict, Roger Wallis who spoke in favor of The Pirate Bay at their trial and received a mountain of floral tributes in return, noted, ‘This will cause a flood of court cases. Against all the ISPs. Because if these guys assisted in copyright infringements, then the ISPs also did. This will have huge consequences. The entire development of broadband may be stalled.’

Peter Sunde has already explained that this decision does not mean the end of the line in this case. There will be an appeal which means we are still far away from the ultimate decision – possibly years away. The case is now expected to move to the high court. Both sides have three weeks to file a written appeal.

Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Piratbyrån commented, ‘The sentence has no formal consequence and no juridical value. We chose to treat the trial as a theater play and as such it’s been far better than we ever could have believed.’

As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above.

This is a breaking news story, please check back frequently for updates.