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. The four defendants in the case, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, were each sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) in damages. Does this spells the end of The Pirate Bay?
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.
“The Stockholm district court has today convicted the four people charged with promoting other people’s infringement of copyright laws,” the court said in a statement.
The four defendants in the case, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, were each sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 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.
“By providing a website with … well-developed search functions, easy uploading and storage possibilities, and with a tracker linked to the website, the accused have incited the crimes that the filesharers have committed,” the court said in a statement to the media.
The court added that the four “knew that copyrighted material was being fileshared.”
The one-year jail sentences were motivated by the “extensive accessibility of others’ (copy)rights and the fact that the operation was conducted commercially and in an organized fashion.” (Source: The Local)
