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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."
... it sucks.
Can someone explain how keeping the site alive would be a good strategy for winning the appeal? Especially the "Nothing will will happen to file sharing" part.
Are they getting a bit delusional? Calling it theatre after being sent to prison for a year doesn't sound like theatre it sounds like hard time and the $2.4m fine doesn't look too much like theatre.
Whether you agree or not with the judgement its very hard to describe imprisonment and multi-million dollar fines as theatre for the media. I worry that they've drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
they'll find it hard when right on the tail of this guilty verdict, there'll be a motion to seize their assets freeze the bank accounts and close the domain down... and they'll have to fight it all from behind bars with very limited access to the external world...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
but expected. A good question is - will this stop anyone from filesharing at all?
loses in the court of public opinion. The entertainment industry is continuing with a policy of thud and blunder. It does not have to be this way. Even for those such as myself who consider that they Pirate Bay crowd is unable to draw the distinction between free speech and free beer, this victory will not go past the court room. As for the file sharing community, this whole idea that changes in technology makes laws obsolete needs to go.
Search in google "filetype:torrent Wolverine" and see what it gets you.
From the article, the guys don't seem worried. Appeals are forthcoming.
From Torrentfreak: "Neither has it been shown that Fredrik made any money from the site argued Nilsson. There was some advertising revenue generated by the site, he said, but this went to cover the site's operating costs."
The court doesn't hand out fines that can't be paid back - it's not in the court's interest.
Considering the $3.5m fine, were the founders perhaps not telling the whole truth about how much money they made from the site?
So, let's say I run a website on which users could provide a link to copyrighted material, and then a user goes ahead and copies that material in a way that violates that copyright. Furthermore, I make it easy for users to search for those links or associated information describing them, and I make some money from the site by having advertisements on it. At that point I could be charged and face potential jail time?
Wow. Will there be any websites hosted in Sweden after this?
Despite not infringing any copyright. Grrreat.
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
Yeah so we've known for some time that running a file sharing site for illegally redistributed content is bad news from a legal liability standpoint ... but I am still surprised by what kinds of activities in our modern age get you jail time.
Is the fundamental issue "loss of money"? Well, the executives of the big banks in the world -- men like Charles Prince (Citigroup), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide - collapsed), Alan Schwartz (Bear Stearns - collapsed) -- have lost far more money. They have lost money for investors, customers, and more recently taxpayers and even your children and your children's children. The damage caused by the systems they were responsible for is far greater han any of these file sharing misdemeanors. This is like comparing an out of control leaf fire in someone's backyard to the carpet bombing of a city.
But what happens to investment bank executives who lost ridiculous sums (we're talking trillions) and ruined the lives of many? Probably nothing... hell, the previous Goldman Sachs CEO was put in charge of the US Treasury Department (Paulson) where he proceeded to redistribute public money to colleagues. Some may argue that men like Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are committing acts of treason by taking money out of the national treasury and diverting it into the hands of the wealthiest elite, the top 1% of society.
But don't expect to see any of these men in jail any time soon. Because in this world, the people who commit the grandest acts of financial theft and destruction are rewarded with lavish salaries and pensions, while the jails are filled with pot smokers, shoplifters, and guys who run file sharing web sites.
The people who run the Pirate Bay have been jailed for "assisting making available copyrighted content", meaning that they linked to copyrighted material? Fuck. That's the very basis of the internet. How can this judgement stand? If this is upheld, none of us are safe. Not Youtube, not Google, not anyone. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of file sharing, how can people be jailed for just linking to material? This is about the worst decision the courts could have made. Fuck you Sweden. Fuck you IFPI and fuck you all the recording artists that are signed to the companies who belong to you. I hope you all rot. It hurts but I'll never give you another unit of my hard earned currency again. I had no issue with paying for music I liked as long as you didn't make me pay for music I didn't. The internet allowed me to do that with greater freedom than ever before and now you jail people who facilitate my search for good music. You've already shut down the OLGA resource, denying thousands of would be guitarists a valuable resource for learning, you've already ripped thousands of music videos from youtube, and now you do this. Well thankyou. A better illustration of the way corporate whores set the legal policy of elected governments I could not find. Not that you'll care because you've brainwashed an entire generation into thinking your reality is the only reality. A generation who grow up believing sharing is wrong. Well. Good luck with that. Eventually you and all your kind will bleed yourself dry and when that happens, I'll make a point of playing poor quality MP3s of popular chart music over your graves and laugh at the irony of the damage you've wrought to the internet in order to protect the artistic integrity of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Jesus. I made a joke on here a few days ago using a line from an Alanis Morrisette song. I'll probably be next up for a stint in the big house.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
2- Where can we donate to help pay the fine?
You really want to subsidize the recording and movie industries with your money?
As much as we may not like it, we don't have a right to dictate what other countries should be doing.
I thought that was what the US have been doing for several years allready ?
Buy things instead of refusing to pay for them?
I feel like some kind of revolutionary when I have to say that.
I think I know what the answer probably is, that it really was about political pressure or bribery, but I'd like to give Swedish courts the benefit of the doubt first and see the reasoning behind the decision. Does the Swedish legal system make this sort of thing available?
I'd say it's very improbable that it's polital pressure or bribery behind the verdict since Sweden is one of the least corrupt countries in the world (according to Transparency International) and judges aren't elected, they are civil servants. I think the reason is that the court isn't familiar enough with these new developments and might be lacking the ability to comprehend them. After all, there's a reason they're sitting in the first judicial instance and not judging in the appeals court.
The full court opionion is probably already out but it will take some time for people to read and analyze it. So keep your eyes open for more information.
A couple of responses here have said things like "this could impact legitimate businesses" or "what about legitimate filesharing".
The first rule surely here to learn is naming it "Pirate Bay" did tend to indicate exactly what the intention was of the site, it wasn't to enable legitimate business, it wasn't to enable legitimate file sharing it was to enable video/music piracy... the fairly unsubtle clue was in their freaking name.
For those who talk about them "not hosting content but just storing lists" lets shift to the real world. Lets say that someone "just" has a house into which all drug dealers can go and buy stuff off all the drug smugglers but the actual exchanges are done down the road in a car park... are the people with the house completely and utterly innocent of setting up "The Drug Exchange" because no drugs actually enter their house? Hitting the supply chain is one of the easiest ways to disrupt drug distribution and this is the equivalent for copyright "piracy".
As much as people like to dress it up in complexity as to why these folks are innocent it does come down to a rather easy thing
1) Sharing copyright material is not allowed
2) They set up a site to PROMOTE and SUPPORT the piracy of copyright material
3) They named the site after the "crime" of piracy
4) They kept saying "nah, nah, na, na, nah, can't catch us"
This has nothing to do with a legitimate business and no impact on legitimate businesses or file-sharing, this was a site set up explicitly to promote the sharing of copyright materials.
Stop bloody dressing it up as anything else
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Is this in the same sense that businesses with their own parking lots help commit car jacking?
My impression was that several US music companies also seemed rather unhappy and didn't like the Pirate Bay people either.
Since when is helping to commit infringment a crime? can you imagine the cell room conversation?
"What you in for?"
"harbouring a fugitive you?"
"Assisting copyright infringement"
What kind of crap is this? A year and 3 million for contributing to a civil offence? Remember TPB arent the people who actually did the illegal acts they simply made them possible.
Lets use this precedent to sue the US DoT for all traffic related damages. after all we wouldn't have traffic accidents without roads.
So, what are all the users of TPB considering doing to support
the folks behind TPB, who have supported them, in some way, in
past?
I don't think it's enough to celebrate the continuation of TPB
while forgetting the hassle, that its makers & operators have
to go through, now that they've been taken to task for TBP.
What? Consider them just happy martyrs, as you go on using the
legacy they've left you (as if they were dead)?
Well...? :-/
That would mean, that we acknowledge the fine as just and appropriate, but I, personally, don't.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets."
Oh yeah, and he isn't?
That's different. He's standing for the principle that the phonographic industry should be allowed to line its own pockets.
And knife manufacturers help commit knife crimes but they haven't been prosecuted for it.
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
2- Where can we donate to help pay the fine?
You really want to subsidize the recording and movie industries with your money?
No, we want to help these guys get the fine paid off. You do realize that not paying for "damages" is terms for being put back into prison, right? The property they "stole" was imaginary, but the money they have to pay has to be real.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I'm going to guess that amount still translates to "more money than they have in their wallets."
The proceeds from the fine will go to the corporations responsible for bringing the charges against them in the first place. Are you really advocating that we should be funding them?
That's the worst thing we can do.
The chances are they don't even have the kind of money they're being asked to pay and as such they'll never be able to pay the fine.
If we start paying it for them we'll be giving money to the very people we don't want to give it to who would otherwise not have received it because the TPB owners didn't have the money to pay it in the first place.
No the real bummer is that so many people like you think that they are not criminals. Last time I checked, its illegal to take something that is not yours and you didn't pay for.
You make a copy. You don't take something.
And it has been that way for thousands of years.
No, it isn't. You could copy the Mona Lisa until you're green in the face, no problem.
You fully well know what they are trying to accomplish with their site. Don't pretend like its something its not.
They are providing torrent files. Plain text files. On which no copyright lies, or at least nobody minds that they copy those.
It is for encouraging piracy plain and simple.
Piracy happens in the coastal waters of Somalia. What you mean is called "copyright infringement".
No, but we can help them by not buying any music or movies for a couple of months.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No the real bummer is that so many people like you think that they are not criminals. Last time I checked, its illegal to take something that is not yours and you didn't pay for. And it has been that way for thousands of years.
And to any response saying "But they are only providing the links". Give me a fucking break. You fully well know what they are trying to accomplish with their site. Don't pretend like its something its not. It is for encouraging piracy plain and simple.
I don't use TPB or illegal torrents myself, but from my understanding TPB is effectively a torrent search engine. This sets a bad president, what's next suing Google because their image search has got thumbnails of copyrighted pictures, and points to places where you can acquire said unlawful material. It's the individual copyright infringers that are the problem*, if there was no demand for TPB it wouldn't exist.
*IMO the bigger problem is unreasonable copyright laws, but how many people are going to TPB to download out of print works that they can't get hold of in any other way, or works that any sane person thinks should have been made public domain a decade ago?
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
It's not like 2.7 million euros divided by four companies is any real money to them. We're talking about companies with hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year.
No, it's more about helping these guys not get bankrupt, if needed. But first there's all the appeals to go through, of course. Theoretically it could go up to the European Supreme Court.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Bullshit.
There is nothing Swedish about the companies pushing this case both through money and political pressure. This is very much a decision that has been forced upon the defendants through foreign commercial influence and as soon as foreign commercial influence has pushed it's influence we are equally within our rights to push our views too.
By showing our distaste and by acting against those foreign companies in boycotting their products in our own countries, by pressuring our governments to also stop catering to these companies there is still a lot we can do.
The court may be Swedish, the defendants may be Swedish, the site may even be Swedish, but the companies and groups pushing the prosecution as well as the result of the prosecution most certainly are not purely Swedish and it is against these that we can act.
And what, exactly did the guys from TPB "take", douchebag?
"Encouraging" something is about the weakest threshold there is for prosecution, and only used by prosecutors who having someone powerful whispering in their ear.
Tell you what, I'd like to encourage you to dunk your head in a toilet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately I don't know Swedish so can't read it in context. But if that's purely the context then surely he's missed an absolutely more fundamental point - he hasn't actually ruled whether it was illegal.
Effectively if he's saying he made the decision because it was on a commercial scale and organised and he made it on that alone then his ruling is simply idiotic because businesses run on a commercial scale and are organised but that doesn't make them illegal. He must surely have also decided that he felt their operation or actions were for some reason illegal? It's that conclusion I'm intrigued about because I'm still rather puzzled as to why or how linking is illegal in his view.
If a pledge / donation system was setup - and they reached the target quickly - then that would also send a strong message to the RIAA and their ilk that their "potential" customer base don't agree with the verdict.
Swedish jails are more like holiday camps anyway - so I think the founders will survive more than intact.
For those who posted that they wouldn't be found guilty and are now bleating on about them being acquitted at appeal, remember that appeals do go two ways. It could actually end up that the appeals court or the high court finds that they weren't actually handed out a severe enough sentence and increases the jailtime and/or fine.
With such an offence having a 2 year maximum sentence in Sweden and with TPB basically being the world no.1 site, there's a possibility that they could actually see a sentence increase.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
and I really doubt that Sweden will put them to jail for not paying a fine they cannot pay. We're not talking about a barbaric country here.
Just one that has judges idiotic enough to sentence you to a year in jail for being an ACCESSORY to copyright infringement. How about doing the same to everyone who's ever had anything to do with making a printer, scanner, computer, speaker, microphone, ....
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
For thousands of years people have been copying each others' creative works - music, words, inventions... without reimbursement. It's only within the last blink of an eye of human society that this has been referred to as "piracy" and "copyright" or "patent infrigement."
Previously it was referred to as "language" and "culture."
This space available.
Google is not next. What everybody seems to be missing here is that the torrents with copyrighted material were not a small minority easily lost in a large amount of torrents. Just look at the top 100 list at TPB - seriouly, how many non-copyrighted works have you ever seen on that list? Copyrighted material is what TPB lives off. The owners of TPB should once in a while check out what is being transmitted on their site (perhaps by looking at the top 100 list). If it turns out that the majority of transfers are illegal (which they are in Sweden), then the site owners actually have a responsibility to do something about it. It's like I'm renting stalls in a marketplace: if one or two sellers have drugs behind the counter, nobody can blame me. However, if the majority of the sellers openly sell drugs, then it is my responsibility as owner to do something about it. And in the case of google, the large majority of material is completely legal. That's why they don't have to worry about this issue.
All it would do is show MPAA that the consumer base has cash, and that they can "monetize" TPB via the courts... Does this sound familiar? RIAA pulled this stunt with Napster back in the day. I'm curious why they feel prison is appropriate however, when a shutdown was an acceptable result with Napster...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Are you fucking kidding me? Did you really just connect file sharing with a movement to acknowledge the humanity of African Americans? Please, get some perspective.
No, he pointed out a philosophical underpinning of civil disobedience -- that to break an unjust law one ought to do it openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty. That is, one who performs civil disobedience shows the utmost respect for the law by, in fact, violating the law.
The quote isn't about the respective issues being morally comparable -- it's about a comparison in methdology.
Now, there's still a question whether the Pirate Bay are acting with this purpose (civil disobedience), but that's another matter.
Thought thinks itself.
Even as a recording musician, I must disagree. Promoting the creation of works for the public good is EXACTLY the intent of intellectual property law.
From the U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8
:
So the logic is: we, the public, want people to create lots of stuff for us to enjoy. Therefore, we will give them an incentive. We will temporarily prevent others from profiting from their work.
The goal of the law is to promote the good of the public, not of the creator. All intellectual property law should be considered by this standard - "how will granting this protection benefit the public?" - not in terms of the "rights" of the creator.
For example, how long should copyright last? The term has been extended several times already. If that temporary monopoly becomes permanent, then the public's resources (for example, the courts) are no longer being used for public good, but for the good of private individuals and corporations.
I am not in favor of piracy. And I believe if you enjoy movies or music or art or literature, you should want to support their creation financially. But we should remember that copyright and patents exist to benefit the people, not the owners of those properties. Which is exactly why they should become public domain after a reasonable time - so the public can fully enjoy the work we have protected and nurtured via our taxpayer-funded legal system.
I see a lot of people showing outrage. First, let me state I use TPB. Im not going to go get all high and mighty and talk about the evils of file sharing. But lets keep things in perspective. TPB was not raising money for kittens with cancer. They are running a web site for the sole purpose of profiting off large scale copyright infringement. Putting aside arguments over wether or not a tracker technically constitutes copyright infringement, they were not raising money for kittens with cancer, they are profiting off large scale copyright infringement.
On page 76 of the verdict it is quite clear that what ultimately killed TPB is the fact that they, even though they knew of infringing material, didn't act to remove it.
The court had quite a good grasp of BitTorrent. What they stated was that:
1. When someone does something illegal (copyright infirngement)...
2. ...anyone involved, however tangentially (the tracker operator), can be held accountable...
3. ...but, and this is the big one, you must have either purposefully aided the illegal act, or acted with willful blindness.
On page 76, the court discusses letting the accused off due to them being "service providers", and while finding them to in fact be service providers, asserts that a service provider that assists in infingement, is notified that they are doing so, and keeps on assisting, is indeed party to the infringement.
Note the the next TPB: Do what YouTube did and have a legal department. Cooperate with rights holders. Take stuff down.
No. Every download creates a new copy of the work in question. Selling a used book, CD, or DVD does not create a new copy. If person A sells a used CD to person C and then wants to own the CD again, he must buy a new copy. If person B provides the same CD for download and person C downloads the CD, C has a copy of the CD and B still has a copy of the CD.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You would have just illegally downloaded it, so your boycott is meaningless.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
"The property they "stole" was imaginary, but the money they have to pay has to be real."
You know, the money spent developing those "imaginary" products was real too. I'm not sure how you'd explain to the workers and companies who spent billions of dollars and millions of man hours creating software and entertainment products that are traded for free on Piratebay that the fruits of their labour are imaginary.
This stubborn, ongoing refusal to allow that digital works have a reality to them, and an intrinsic value, is self-serving and it's getting old and tired.
Everyone knows what The Pirate Bay is all about. The creators of the website CLEARLY knew what it was going to be used for, infact they moved their servers to Sweden specifically to avoid the risk of copyright infringement charges being brought against them.
There are cases where copyright legislation is clearly out of line, or where it's used against genuinely innocent people this for example. Defending people like The Pirate Bay portrays the 'free' culture as a bunch of criminals.
And honestly, if there was a scumbag at the end of your street telling passers by where they could find a pimp, you are saying you wouldn't expect the cops to get rid of them? Give me a break.