Pirate Bay founders sent to jail

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor (£2.4m) in damages.

In a Twitter posting, Sunde said: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."

Sunde went on to say that he "got the news last night that we lost".

"It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the 117m kronor (£9m) in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

Speaking to the BBC earlier this week, Sunde said that there was no difference between us and Google."

"The Pirate Bay will continue. Nothing is going to happen if we lose, for a multitude for reasons, not least because we will immediately appeal," he said.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Source: BBC