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 $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre".

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."


It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement

Read more at the dot.life blog
Q&A: Pirate Bay verdict
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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 $17.5m 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.
Pirate Bay"s first server
The Pirate Bay's first server is now a museum exhibit in Stockholm

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.

Continue: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

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I personally support these guys, they have top lawyers in Sweden, and they really are not breaking any rule or law! They are simply supplying links.

If a guy owns a gun store and sells a gun to a guy, and that guy shoots 3 guys, does the gun store keeper get arrested for murder? No, he isn't part of the murder at all, all what he has done is legal,exactly the same in this case, it's legal for what they were doing in sweden.

But what do you guys think? Huilty or not guilty? VOTE!

yep they should do time and pay fines, and all these other websites doing the same thing as them let them all go down as well.

Then maybe our software and music prices will go back to affordable prices and people will have jobs!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't feel sorry for any of them but if you really stop and think it could be you oneday being ripped off.

What I dn't get is why don't they just get the ISP's to block the websites, as simple as that ya?

The Pirate Bay, only supplys links, there not doing anything wrong, there servers are offshore where this is allowed. So why should they pay? They didn't do anything wrong.
Why is it fair that Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures only grow richer and richer, and we get poor everytime we pay 50$ for a game, dvd, or whatever.

Why is it fair that Coca-Cola and Pepsi only grow richer and richer, and we get poor evertime we pay 50 cents (or 75 at popular vending machines) for a can of soda?

75 cents is affordable for most. Also nobody can live without food. We could live without spending money on DVD's, etc. Whats your point?

They grow richer and richer because you like their stuff and you buy it, they aren't putting a gun to your head and forcing you to buy it, so it's your own fault if you go broke buying all their stuff.

Ofcourse it is, thats why piracy existes, for people that can't buy their products.

My point is, soda is not food, you can live without it (though, some would say otherwise). Similarly, you can live without games and movies. If you can't spend $15 dollars buying a movie, spend $2 renting it... You'll probably only watch it once (or multiple times throughout the rental period) anyway. A game you can rent for 3 weeks at about $5/week, for a total of $15 and have it beat before you return it. At which point (unless it is something as engrossing as Halo ), you'll probably stop playing it and save $40; that's the way most games go.
Bluemage pretty much summed my point up.


Piracy exists because people would rather get something for free than pay for it. It's not only the poor people that take part in piracy, the rich download stuff illegally also. It's human nature to prefer getting the free product over the one you have to pay for if it is accessible. By making piracy accessible, the Pirate Bay is essentially helping people steal from the people who deserve the money for what they made.

I'm afraid your analogy is not accurate... it should be more like this:

If a guy owns a gun store and sells a gun to a guy KNOWING THAT HE IS GOING TO USE IT TO KILL PEOPLE, and that guy shoots 3 guys, does the gun store keeper get arrested for murder?

Yes, he is criminally responsible.

See maybe stuff is cheap where you live, but a game here for a ps3 or even ps2 goes for 300-200reais, 100-200 Dolars, movies like blu-ray are 200reais, 100dolars, a blu-ray player is about 3k. A PS3 is 2k, a Xbox is 2k, my Wii was 1,700 reais. Maybe thats why pirating is so normal here? i Guess its from country to country, we could spend hours discussing this, piracy is wrong, i agree. But when your out of choice, its what you got.

As for Fakens point, how is it his fault? As long as the guy has a permit, and bought a gun, he has no fault in what the person does with the gun. Hes just anyother worker like most of us.

Stuff is more expensive in Canada than USA and more expensive in Australia and New Zealand so whats your point? Brazil is not the only country paying high prices but it also works on your currency.

The more people steal the more prices will go up so your doing it to yourself. Plus it's killing the music and software industries.

Anyways what you and Faken write about guns etc, in Vancouver recently they closed down a huge gun shop because of all the gang shootings too bad the guy had all his $$$$ invested he gets nothing back. Didn't matter if they had a permit or not.

Concerning the music industry, I don't think the problem is piracy tbh. If they would be willing to change their business model, then it would work. Right now they are still with the physical CDs system that nobody buys anymore obviously and surprise, they don't know what to do.

If they adapted their business for the internet earlier, it wouldn't be a problem. So many questions where it doesn't make sense to buy music the way it is right now. Why should I pay for a CD with only 1-2 good song on it? Why buy a song with DRM on it? Why pay for a song I can listen for free anytime on Youtube?

So many moves they made to annoy the customers (not only DRM, but suing individuals for sharing songs when in the end they discovered it made no significant results at all). And seriously, look at all the BS music they release recently. The popular songs is no longer about which artist is really good but which label can put the most money in marketing. iTunes for example, the "popular songs" will now become 1.29$ while the other will be 99c. Wow nice idea, why not keep the prices low for the few people who buy their music legit?

The TV/Movie industry is doing good right now with Hulu and all the easy rental services, but I've seen nothing good from the music industry tbh. I agree with you D, but as for the music industry, I have absolutely no respect for them atm.

I have to agree with Faken on the gun issue. If you know for a fact that somebody is going to use the gun they are about to purchase to kill somebody, you are obligated to not sell them the gun and possibly even report them (so in the least they have a post-it note on their record).

I also agree with you Llama, the piracy debate has been done to death. By now people should now it is wrong, but a half-billion other factors, mostly related to human nature, are going to stop people from totally getting rid of piracy.

NG, you just said something that has been on my mind for longer than i can think to remember. Businesses survive in the economy by adapting to the customer, not the other way around. A big part of the issue with pirated music is that the legal stuff like iTunes and Napster have remained inaccessible. If the music industry would dramatically change that fact, then i'm sure we would see a huge reduction in pirated music. I can't tell you how glad i was to see everybody getting rid of DRM over the past year or-so. Unfortunately, when i saw that DRM was going by-by, it was followed by a footnote saying "coming soon, better DRM that actually works and keeps people happy"... Not much to say past that...

I think piracy aside, we can all agree the music industry has got it's work cut out on the next best way to supply music to the consumer. IMO, I honestly think filesharing COULD be used in the industries favor. Perhaps if there was some sort of way that if you buy a track, you buy rights to share it to 5 others, or an album to 2 others, it could have some effectiveness amongst those that can't afford albums. I don't know, say I bought an album, I had the right to share it with 5 others, I go onto a forum, I offer the next 5 people to post a copy of the album, I'm sure there would be all sorts of forums like this popping up if this was the way of sharing.

I agree it's not 100% practical, but my point is, in 5 minutes I thought of an alternative to piracy, why can't the big labels in the music industry do the same thing?

I will admit, I have downloaded thousands of songs since I was 9 and first discovered KaZaa up til now still using torrents, I download movies a lot, but not albums as much, because I have better means of listening to music, I.E Virgin Music on Demand on my TV, YouTube, music channels, and the GREAT UNDERRATED http://www.grooveshaerk.com !!

And i agree, my analogy was a little incorrect there, but my point was that they aren't the ones to blame here, why can't an ISP just take control and say "PirateBay, MiniNova, Torrentz.com are all banned".

British ISP's need to gro some nuts, what was that 1 ISP that blocked P2L that Dan posted?

I'd be cool with torrent sites being banned, because I wouldn't be the ONLY person not being able to download.

Thats my input anyhow

tbh, I would rather have an ISP that doesn't block anything because as soon as a company or government start to "control" things, abuse will always become a concern. Many legit sites would be blocked unfairly.

For the music industry, why nobody come up with a subscription based service? You pay a few $ a month/year and get access to unlimited music and keep them as long as you pay. The few companies that tried it have seen it works.

It's all Googles fault.

lol, so true

There, you said it yourself. Do you really think so?

I don't deny there's a certain satisfaction that goes with legal CD's and everything, but I also think the music and movie industry in particular is making more money than they should. Not only because it's too expensive and that whole damn discussion, but also because artists should enjoy exposure anyway, you don't need to get a superstar salary to make/enjoy making good music. If you ever heard of an "underground scene", you know that confirms what I just said. Superstar salaries are quite out of proportion, as well as top-level payouts and bonuses at multinational companies that we're dealing with.

I think the balance is proper fcuked if music has to cost more when less people buy it, because it doesn't cost a dime if I copy something off someone else, save for the income that I would otherwise *maybe* have paid the company. The industry has no shortage of money, since Britney Spears earns 10.000 of my salaries in the same period of time. I will not accept the fact that music has to cost more as less people *buy it as long as the industry has money like that to spare.

They should focus more on the quality stuff that is truely something more than bits/radiowaves/aircompression, like concerts, decent equipment or whatever, stimulation of creativity. I'm sure there's plenty of money to be earned there, and it's actually beneficial to the human race in general, while right now we're just beefing up a select group's wallets. Maybe then in time we'll see some quality, innovation, progress.

Besides, isn't downloading way more friendly to the environment? Do I sound like a hippy



Good point, but if it comes to guns, what else are they made for? Handguns aren't made for hunting, and self-defense with a gun is (hopefully, but not always threatening enough to be) lethal. However, thát is legal.

Should people with no money not listen to music?

In my opinion, whats the difference between recording a few songs from the radio and downloading an MP3? Just because they have a tiny TINY chance they may catch us downloading, they choose to make it illegal and come down hard on our asses because they cant prove we're recording from the radio but can prove we are downloading songs from the internet.

In my opinion, they really need to just 'get over it'. If they are so smart in the music industry (Which they aren't) they would know 99% of the internet population like tracks instantly, they like things without any CDs, DVDs, no fiddly bits, just straight to the media... I would pay £100 a month to have access to unlimited movies, music, tv shows etc. £100 per household, it's nothing! To hell with it, make it £200 a household! ITs affordable and easy! Theres 6 people who download in my house alone, i"m sure we can all afford £30ish a month on unlimited stuff, there so many ways around piracy, but they choose to be complete arseholes about it, fair enough i'm stealing £5 - £15 a download, but they still ain't broke yet! they're still multimillionaires, they're still making new music, so wheres the message that piracy is killing the entertainment industry?

If you ask me, i think the monthly payments to movies etc. is probably the way forward. But at the moment, I'll stick to TPB.

even homeless people have ipods these days

So here's a scenario for you guys, you spend yrs in school training for your trades etc then decide to become a software developer you have an outstanding student loan of say around $40,000 on top of that you have living costs not to mention the car your still paying off. You create some snazzy piece of software that you sell for $20.00 but within a week someone has leaked it to a warez site. Now your software is useless as it'll only be the very few that buy it and you go bankrupt within a month.

Pirate Bay is not just all about music and movies or any of these other websites, they distribute EVERYTHING!!!! from simple graphics to a fully coded website/passwords/credit cards that's the part I really hate because it's the little people being burned not the huge corporations that can afford to keep themselves afloat.

When you guys get your website/tutorials ripped you scream blue murder, in all reality there's no difference but in all of this if they remove the pirate bay then they also have to remove Google, Yahoo and any other search engine because there's no difference they all do the same thing.



They have this now, it's not legal but it's still out there lol

This is something you have to take into account before developing an app. Your app will be shared no matter what you do. The World of Goo game developers chose not to add any DRM to their game to prove that it did not make any difference. And guess what, about 9/10 of the connections made online were from non-legit copies. They compared with the ratio in DRM-protected apps, exact same number. So this is something you have to get in mind. If you don't like it then don't write softwares, as simple as that. I still think there's enough ppl that will actually buy the app. So it's not because it's shared that it's too late, you won't be making anymore money, etc.

Of course it's not always fair for the small company, but I don't think you're going to pay for softwares that are often sold at "company prices", which are way too expensive for the average joe. No wonder nobody knows someone that paid for Photoshop, if they made it affordable for the individuals, ppl would buy it.

Last year I found PS CS brand new still sealed for $10 in a garage sale here, kept it for a few months never opened and sold it for $100 lol The person selling it really had no idea what photoshop even was.

"I have no intentions of opening up an online shop to sell photos!"

That's great, cus I can't see you ever being a photographer and sitting in the African jungle alone lol

But I look forward to the day you want a house then you can come back and share with us all how we can get them for free.

*has the Adobe CS4 Box and cd* :flailsarms: haha

It's affordable if you are student and have a minimum wage job : D


anyways...I think I posted this before >>; but what I dont get is government soo worked up over the filesharing issues...ever heard of BLOCK THE WEBSITES?!

and if they dont have time to find someone they can easily hire some dude to go on the web and look for filesharing sites and block them...not that hard..even if they are hosted in turkey or wherever it is, this doesn't stop ISP's from blocking the website?

It seems to me the companies are more into finding people that do download Files and sue them for thousands of dollars and get money then stop the whole process.

I suggest you read my reply earlier in this topic. Believe me, you don't want the government to control what you can see or not on the internet. I prefer having no sites blocked than a few legit sites being unfairly blocked.



Heh, that's where the money is. Isn't that ironic?

I know, I'm not saying block all, just the illegal ones?

He he not

Not at all , cause the person who buy the gun made a decision to kill three people not the seller. The seller should not be held accountable for someone else's actions.

My Scenario : If a person own a sport's shop and sell a guy a baseball bat and the guy brutally murder a person should the sport's shop owner be charged for murder?

What Piratebay is doing is legal but I think they know that they are supporting piracy and they are just thinking of a excuse not to be put in jail. I personally think they should but shut down!

A year in jail aint so bad.. They should just do the time like men and count there blessings. They were playing with fire and got burned... what did they expect. Atleast they will have a life when they get out of jail.

Actually their are ways to stop people from accessing your software. I've seen it done with a program I bought. I can't say exactly how it all worked but they had control to the access code of the software and you had to give them a code then they would do something on their end and gave you a link which you ended up clicking and it would finaly give you access. True it was a little annoying go threw them and you needed internet but they were very fast with it all and like who doesn't have internet these days. Also I think their was a way even if you didn't have internet. But my point is what ever they did on their ended and the way they did it provented anyone from actually hacking it. To this day I haven't seen one person that hacked it and I even checked around in forums just for fun and people just couldn't figure it out what they did.

Also some software companies don't care if ordinary people like you and me hack their software. Some people actually like it. This way people get familiarized with it and ask to get it for their production at work and then the companies buy the licenses. Most major software companies make their money from just the companies and studios.

As for the music downloading thing. I'm in the middle. I personally buy the CD's of the bands I like but the odd music that I just want to see what it's like or new groups that I never herd I'll d/l them. If I like them then I will most likely get the album. Also most of the more underground bands and starting up bands actually like having their songs downloaded illigeally. Some of them even put it on those site themselves just so that it will get hurd. And even other artists even the bigger ones leek their own songs just to hype up the people and make free advertisement on the web for themselves.

Also most of the music downloaded are songs or even artists that most of the people wouldn't of even bought the CD for in the first place. I feel that the music industry just needs to change up their game plan and do things right. Also, out of all that money the music companies get from suing people. How much of that money do you think ever gets to the artists that had THEIR songs downloaded. I'm sure they don't even see a penny.

As for movies. I usually watch them at the theaters or rent them and the movies I really like I just buy them. You don't see the movie industry complaining as much as the music industry. Atleast I don't.

Curious what was the software?, btw had no idea who you was til I noticed your sig lol

hahah Yeah it's been a while and I changed my name just before I left I think, so that would explain it.

The software was called MEL studio Pro... It's a scripting program I use in Maya 3D to write all my MEL scripts. It's a small program that not alot of people know about since it's just for Maya but I was surprised to find out how the licensing was managed. I personally found it to be very smart.

why should piratebay pay for the fines

if the music industry and film industry reduces the prices of films, movies, music etc then there wouldnt be as many torrent sites now than there are

they are still making billions

The thing is, he isn't doing anything against the law. He isn't hosting any of the files, he's linking to downloads. So, maybe he is helping people steal things, and that's wrong, it's just not illegal. All he is doing is providing the information. Morally wrong, not illegally wrong.

i read the whole thread just waiting to give my 2 cents.... Trevor Rose put exactly the words i was thinking in the post above morally wrong, not illegal. and through court of law, their is no way around that fact.