Pirate Bay guilty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[joeblow]

http://www.thelocal.se/18908.html

Pirate Bay guilty

The four men connected with The Pirate Bay were found guilty of being accessories to copyright infringement by a Swedish court on Friday, delivering a symbolic victory in the entertainment industry's efforts to put a stop to the sharing of copyrighted material on the internet.

    * Confiscated Pirate Bay server on display in Swedish museum (16 Apr 09)
    * Pirate Bay shields 100,000 users (8 Apr 09)
    * Pirate on prosecutor: 'The old bastard's crazy' (2 Mar 09)

The four defendants in the case, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, had been charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".

All four men were sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.5 million) in damages.

The trial attracted wide international attention, with file sharers and copyright holders around the world wondering what sort or precedent may be set by the Stockholm court as it assessed arguments by the entertainment industry that the four men behind The Pirate Bay had been accessories to copyright infringement.

The Stockholm District Court printed up 250 copies of the judgment to meet the expected interest from media outlets.

In an unusual step, the court even plans to hold a press conference shortly after making the ruling public.

According to public prosecutor Håkan Roswall, The Pirate Bay produced annual earnings of around 10 million kronor ($1.2 million).

He argued that the site was purely a business enterprise and that defendants should each receive prison sentences of up to one year.

Each of the four men charged in the case are connected to The Pirate Bay in different ways, although none claim to be the sole founder or primary operator of the site.

During the trial, they argued that they hadn't earned a single krona from The Pirate Bay and that the site was more of a hobby. The income earned from advertising on the site simply covers the cost of operating The Pirate Bay, they claimed.

The site relies on a commonly used file sharing technology known as bittorrent, which according to prosecutors has given millions of users illegal access to copyrighted material.

Specifically, the case dealt with alleged illegal file sharing of 20 songs, nine films, and four computer games with the US entertainment industry looking to claim up to $15 million in damages from the accused.

The courtroom proceedings, which concluded in early March, featured a number of tense moments, memorable quotes, and legal theatrics.

On the second day of the trial, Roswall announced he was amending the charges by removing all mention of "complicity in the production of copyrighted material".

"A sensation," defence lawyer Per E. Samuelson said at the time.

"It is very rare that you win half the case after one and a half days and it is clear that the prosecutor has been deeply affected by what we said yesterday."

Later, the defence accused prosecutors and lawyers for the entertainment industry of "Perry Mason tactics" when they attempted to introduce new documents into evidence.

And when Per Sundin, the head of Universal Music in Sweden, detailed the losses suffered by his company in recent years, he laid the blame squarely on The Pirate Bay, calling the site "the biggest and baddest villain" in the music industry's battle against illegal file sharing.

But it was defendant Svartholm Warg who perhaps best summed up his and the other defendants' attitudes toward the entertainment industry and prosecutor Roswall, following the latter's argument in his closing statement that The Pirate Bay was a profitable business.

"The old bastard's crazy," he told the TT news agency during a break in the proceedings.

While Friday's ruling is an important step in clarifying some of the legal issues associated with the distribution of copyrighted material in the digital age, it is by no means the final word.

The defendants are expected to appeal the judgment, and many observers expect the case to eventually be heard by Sweden's Supreme Court, with a detour through the European Court of Justice also a possibility.

Either way, it will likely be several years before a final ruling in the case is reached, by which time today's bitTorrent technology may very well have been replaced by a new method for sharing files on the internet.

TT/The Local (mailto:news@thelocal.se">news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)

[shuffle]

Fracking outrageous to send them down for a year each.

Interested to know if the "profits" figure [from their 'meet a fuck-buddy' type ads] of $1.23million is anywhere near close cos it's that sort of thing that the prosecution have made a big thing about.

The long term result of this is easy to predict - more companies will start offering VPN /  encrypted feeds for *everything* we do online.

The torrent scene without TPB won't be much of a scene at all.

[mgt23]

bad they were found guilty but what exactly did you expect? This is a good thing in a way. It will force people to open source p2p encryption like stealth net or better and better variants. if a system is centralized and can be taken down by the law it is no scene in reality.

[shuffle]

Here is Russia Today's coverage::
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOmph-7M7zk