Guilty verdict in Pirate Bay case

The four men behind Swedish file sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) have been found guilty of breaching copyright law.

Friday, 17 April 2009

The high profile case ended today (April 17th) with Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde being sentenced to one year in prison.

Damages totalling 30 million kronor (£2.4 million) must also be paid by the four men to organisations such as Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros and Columbia Pictures.

TPB was launched six years ago and describes itself as the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world. The website only hosts torrent files, as opposed to storing the actual copyrighted material on its servers.

It has over 3.5 million registered users who download music, films and other entertainment content through the site.

The prosecution against TPB was brought by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the global recording industry.

Responding to the guilty verdict, John Kennedy, IFPI chairman and chief executive, says that it is "the right outcome".

"This is good news for everyone, in Sweden and internationally, who is making a living or a business from creative activity and who needs to know their rights will protected by law," he comments.

Despite the verdict, Darren Waters of the BBC says that it is likely TPB will continue to operate as its servers are based outside of Sweden and it has considerable financial support.

Read our recent article called Film piracy: good or bad?

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