Pirate Bay Founders Sentenced to Fines and Prison
-
A Swedish court has sentenced the founders of "The Pirate Bay" torrent site to one year in prison and 30 million kronor collectively ($3.5 million) for their actions in maintaining their famous torrent site. The judgement was reduced from 117 million kronors sought by the content owners.
"By providing a site with, as the district court found, sophisticated search functions, easy upload and storage, and a website linked to the tracker," the defendants were guilty of assisting copyright infringement, the court said.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry was thrilled with the verdict. CEO John Kennedy, who testified at the trial, said "Todays verdict is the right outcome…"
More than 1,000 people turned out across Sweden to protest the verdict. The protest is being lead by Malin Littorin-Ferm of the Pirate Party's Ung Pirat youth league. Since the verdict was announced, support for Sweden's Pirate Party has exceeded that for the Green Party! At the moment, almost half of all Swedish males under the age of 30 are considering voting for the Pirate Party in the 2009 European Parliament elections.
"We young people have a whole platform on the Internet, where we have all our social contacts – it is there that we live. The state is trying to control the Internet and, by extension, our private lives," Littorin-Ferm said.
Carl Lundström, fourth defendant and heir to the Wasabröd cracker fortune, appears to be good for the money to pay the fines. But, the future of The Pirate Bay remains uncertain. To date, The Pirate Bay continues to operate.
It is doubtful that the content owners have accomplished anything with the Pirate Bay verdict. Decentralized torrent tracking may be the wave of the future. Tribler is an open source peer-to-peer client which enables users to share content without the centralized tracking of torrent sites. Tribler's searches are done over the networks of fellow bittorrent users, sidestepping centralised torrent tracking altogether. As Emily Bell of The Guardian says:
The Pirate Bay is not the beginning of the end for copyright infringement. That ship has already sailed, carrying more than just pirates.
hxxp://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/the-pirate-bay-verdict-guilty-with-jail-time.ars
hxxp://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10567532
hxxp://www.tribler.org/trac
hxxp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/20/pirate-bay-digital-media
Photo below is Pirate Bay co-founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi.
-
We should note that after some press announcements the sentence is going to be appealed.
-
A surprisingly emotional outburst has developed as a response to the verdict.
"Operation Baylout" has been launched.
hxxp://partyvan.info/wiki/Operation_Baylout
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's Swedish website was defaced on Thursday. Hackers have begun hitting the IFPI and its lawyers with DDoS attacks. A campaign is underway to saturate the MPAA's anti-piracy office with faxes. People are being encouraged to saturate bulletin boards with threads criticizing the verdict.
"They want to get the message across that the IFPI can not mess with the internet and that the internet is serious business," coldblood, an admin at anonnet.org told El Reg.
hxxp://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/20/ddos_hacktivism_pirate_bay/
-
fuck yeah, internet in motion again!
