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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.
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
but expected. A good question is - will this stop anyone from filesharing at all?
If you take the site down then your admitting you did something wrong. I don't know much about the case, but thats how i see it.
Search in google "filetype:torrent Wolverine" and see what it gets you.
From the article, the guys don't seem worried. Appeals are forthcoming.
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?
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?
Is this in the same sense that businesses with their own parking lots help commit car jacking?
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...? :-/
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.
You miss the point.
It was a generally held belief (and may well still turn out to be so) that what Pirate Bay did was NOT illegal in their country. It's yet to be (convincingly) proved otherwise, because the "evidence" was sparse and technically-incorrect at best. It was that unsure that it took a court to decide it, even after police raids that couldn't find anything "illegal". And it has yet to be appealed against.
What you name a place has NOTHING to do with the law behind it. You can't be convicted based on what you called something, unless the name itself is somehow illegal.
And as for "hitting the supply chain", maybe the best analogy then would be to stop camera-recording and/or screener leaks rather than chase down people who downloaded it? In actual fact if you want to eliminate something then you have to take out ALL forms of contact with it - drug dealers, drug pushers, drug takers, etc. This is the equivalent of suing not just the site owners, but the people who leaked your DVD and the people downloading it. By extension of the intentions of this case, that would also imply suing anyone who ever links to those torrents, anywhere, and anyone who carries the links to those torrents (e.g. Google) - it's like arresting people because they had a discussion about drugs, or told someone not to go to a particularly drug-ridden part of town late at night - you're trying to convict people who had only incidental connection with the crime but have performed no criminal act.
Remember - it's still not established law that what the Pirate Bay did was illegal. That's not true until all Swedish court appeals are finished and no more are allowed to be brought (and even after that, there's the possibility of an EU appeal/intervention).
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.
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.
There are clear laws against drug 'safehouses' and the like.
The internet hosts all kinds of links in all kinds of places. A law has to be unambiguous or it gets mis-interpreted. So while I agree with you in principle that they were perhaps morally guilty, they don't seem to have been convicted of an established crime.
Courts can introduce new laws, but this one has far ranging implications for the net as a whole. If you can't see the danger in such a law then you're not thinking long term.
Promting piracy isn't a crime, most of us are free to either promote it or decry it. Naming a site with 'Piracy' in the title isn't a crime. They didn't share any copyrighted material. They only supported a file sharing operation. It was the users who chose to use it in they way they wanted it. You can't sue a knife manufacturer for all the stabbings in the world.
I know you want to sidestep the legal issue and convict them of a 'moral wrongdoing', but you can't just make up your own laws based on your own moral compass.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Could you provide a source for this? I had a quick Google, but I'm not sure I'm even searching for the right thing. Thanks!