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Pirate Bay Trial Ends In Jail Sentences
myvirtualid writes "The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, 'Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was "commercially driven" when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.' The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. 'Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,' Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter."
Update: 04/17 12:16 GMT by T : Several updates, below.
Thanks to all the readers who have sent in various other links related to this news, including the dozens who noted
the BBC's version of the story. Reader a_n_d_e_r_s submits a link to the verdict itself (large PDF, in Swedish), and writes "The sentencing is not unexpected (max verdict is 2 years in prison) and the damages is about 1/3 of what the companies that has requested damages had requested. Notice that no punitive damages is applicable." Reader yendor writes, "More details are coming and The Pirate Bay will be holding a press conference at 15.00 CET.
HakanRoswallGoatse points out that besides the jail term imposed (and barring the results of planned appeals), "the four men will have to pay $3,6 million in compensation for lost sales to 17 media companies. Among them are: Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision."
HakanRoswallGoatse points out that besides the jail term imposed (and barring the results of planned appeals), "the four men will have to pay $3,6 million in compensation for lost sales to 17 media companies. Among them are: Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision."
No, it's 30 million Swedish Kroner, that's just under 3 million Euros.
Not euros but Swedish crowns, what converts to about $3.58 million, or 2.7 million euros
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were sentenced to a year in jail each. They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor total ($3.6m) in damages. The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures. The news was broken early by Peter Sunde aka brokep via twitter, from a "trustworthy source".
A round-up of the arguments in court has already been discussed on slashdot, and the BBC has some thoughts on what happens next.
The site itself is on servers outside Sweden, and has sufficient funds to remain operational for some time. In combination with the appeal against the verdict already pledged by the men, the site itself should remain operational for now.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Both parties have already made statements that they will appeal if lost, even before the verdict came. This was the first level of Swedish legal system, now it will progress upp to "HovrÃtten", and from that very likely to the Supreme Court.
This case really has to go all the way given that it is the first case of its type, and that a prejudicating ruling must be available for the future.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Doesn't work that way. Even if they didn't appeal, the Swedish prisons are full -- you actually have to queue to serve your sentence, and violent criminals always skip ahead of the queue.
Besides, they're going to appeal. During that time the sentence cannot be implemented as this wasn't something like murder or treason where immediate implementation would be appropriate. And as you say yourself: putting someone in jail severely hinders their chances of appealing.
Come down from your stupid-ass trip. It makes you look silly.
Actually they were found guilty of helping to commit copyright infringement and not infringement per se.
Just saying it like it are.
And that achieves what exactly?
The MPAA/RIAA/Police can still join the filesharing swarm you're connected to and see that you're sharing the copyrighted materials.
At best encrypting it just stops your ISP from easily seeing what exactly you're transferring.
SSL USENET allows you to connect to a trusted source and no one else (and that's the key difference, P2P software means you're connecting to untrusted sources) whilst allowing your connection to be encrypted and hence the contents invisible to your ISP too.
The only weakness with USENET is whether the MPAA/RIAA are successful in going after long established USENET providers like Giganews too like they have The Pirate Bay but at least whilst they don't you're safe as an individual whereas with P2P on public swarms you are not safe as an individual.
"As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go."
Why when the laws are wrong and need to be defied?
The UK's official statistic body, the Office of National Statistics released their latest report on the UK population just this week. It stated that 12% of the population file share, and that's only those who admit to it in surveys or don't hide their activities well not to mention not including those who give physical copies to friends and use say, USENET rather than P2P so the real figure is almost certainly far, far higher than 12%. Even taking the original estimate though, you cannot reasonably continue to persist with laws that criminalise 12% of your population. That's 7.2million people out of 60million, having the activities of that much of the population illegal is clearly wrong.
I'm not justifying the idea that copyright needs to go completely, I don't think it does, I think it's valid in some circumstances, but I do think there needs to be much more of a balance between citizens and the industry as to how the problem is dealt with, currently the solutions are repeatedly skewed 100% in favour of the industry's interests and in that scenario it is only right that citizens defy and ignore the solutions when their opinions aren't taken into account whatsoever in the development of solutions.
The difference is, and it was stated in the trial, that google actively works with the music and movies companys and removes offending files. Quite a bit different from how the pirate bay operate ;)
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
The English name for the Swedish currency is "krona" in singular and "kronor" in plural. The fine in this case is therefore 30 million kronor.
There are only a few swedish crowns in existence, and you have to visit the Swedish Royal Armoury museum to see them.
And I think the verdict stinks and here's why...
Standard reading list:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html "MP3s are not the Devil"
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting "Hollywood Accounting"
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17327 "Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act"
These guys have been stealing your rights for ages, thanks to cash hungry congressmen and presidential candidates. Make that presidents. Obama has stacked the Justice department with his RIAA donors. And as Orson Scott Card points out, these guys suck.
The British Library has a copy of every book ever to be published (at least, published in the UK). Some of those books contain some very very dodgy material - those Victorians had some fetishes which are more than a little bit illegal now.
In association with third parties, the Library maintains an index of all the books such that if you were to look up, for example, "donkey sex", you'd be able to find the appropriate publications. However, if you went to the Library and asked to see these publications, you wouldn't be allowed (except under very clearly defined circumstances). If, on the other hand, you looked up "Housebuilding for beginners", the Library wouldn't stop you accessing those publications.
If this verdict were applied to the companies who maintained the index for/with the British Library, there would be uproar.
TPB did nothing more than provide the index. Google do the same, the British Library do the same.
Fine, by all means beat the living daylights out of the people who follow the index to read the books or download the files, but there is no logical reason why the parties doing the indexing should be held liable for what they are indexing.
I despair. I really do.
it's the rights of the creator of that work to have a say in how and when its reproduced that are being preserved.
Copyright law is actually a relatively recent invention. So no, I would argue that copyright law took away something that was already an inherent freedom, if not a right.
You could argue that it's similar to murder -- no one argues that we have a right to kill people. I would argue that this is a case where the government is stepping in to preserve a particular business model. Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate, but I don't think the right to control an idea you had is anywhere near as inherent as the right to live.
If you don't like the fact that an artist or other creator wants to be in charge of their own work, then just walk away.
That is a good idea.
But I would think, as a content creator, I'd much rather see people pirate my work than see them walk away. Better to be famous and unpaid than just unpaid.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What I'm interested to know is why - despite the prosecution failing to really prove their case, only to speculate on various things - this decision was reached.
Because of two reasons:
1. This lower court consists mostly of a kind of politically-appointed jury, where local politicians serve time on the bench, judging small claims all day. They are not equipped to handle complex copyright cases, but instead rely on expert witnesses and emotions of the "how will the starving artists get paid" kind.
2. It being a complex case, there are a number of interpretations to make of the law and the facts at hand, for example if TPB can seek refuge in the common carrier clauses of a specific law dealing with service providers. The court ruled that they would operate under that law, but not qualify for the exemptions of responsibility in it. Almost every decision of this kind has been ruled against TPB, throughout the verdict.
I have not found a single large miscarriage of justice when reading the verdict, only a large number of small, deliberate steps leading towards a conviction. The same steps in the other direction, each as reasonable and plausible as the ones taken, would have led to an aquittal.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I'm looking for a well written and researched piece that can tell me why TPB and other such sites are good for society, not some crap "I just want stuff for free" argument.
I don't want stuff for free, I want stuff at a fair price, and supplied in a timely and convenient way.
I almost stopped pirating, thanks to linux, emusic and my WoW addiction. I only pirate US and UK TV Shows. If I could legally get them hours after their first broadcast and play them in HD on my HTPC, I'd be glad to pay for the priviledge.
Here in France, the only legal options that I have is to wait several month and watch it on french TV with a shitty french theme song sung by the latest Star Academy winner, and with an equally shitty french dubbing ; or I can wait a few more month and get it on an overpriced DVD with "bonus features" I don't care about. Well, sorry but I'll choose the third solution, which consists in setting up a torrent daemon + RSS plugin.
So I'll continue to pirate as long as the industry waits on its ass blaming others for their own failure. After all, it seems like they don't want my business on Hulu or Youtube, so why would they care if I pirate their stuff ?