Slashdot Mirror


Pirate Bay Founder Sentenced To Jail

An anonymous reader writes "Gottfrid Swartholm Warg — known also as Anakata — was on June 20th sentenced to two years imprisonment for data breaches and aggravated fraud by the District Court of Nacka in his native Sweden. It is unclear at this time wether the decision will be appealed to a higher court. Prison time in Sweden is generally served for two thirds of the time sentenced, if the person behaves well and the court finds no reason to abstain from the norm. Also, time spent in pre-trial confinement (swe: 'häkte') is deducted from the time sentenced. Warg was arrested in Cambodia in september of 2012, transferred to Sweden and ordered by court to remain in pre-trial confinement from September 14th, 2012."

13 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. If you do the math... by msauve · · Score: 5, Informative

    2/3 of 2 years is 16 months. He's been held for 9 months already, so he has another 7 to go (until Jan 2014).

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:If you do the math... by Kiwikwi · · Score: 4, Informative

      2/3 of 2 years is 16 months. He's been held for 9 months already, so he has another 7 to go (until Jan 2014).

      Yeah, and afterwards he's likely going to Denmark, to stand trial there for breaching servers belonging to the Danish police (hosted by the ever-incompetent CSC).

      Remember, he's not serving time for his Pirate Bay involvement (yet?); he's serving time for breaching bank systems and using the access in an attempt to steal millions. Since he was extradited for this case, not the Pirate Bay case, it seems that the Swedish prosecutors actually consider this worse than file sharing. (Who would've thought?)

    2. Re:If you do the math... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Funny

      They'll probably block Pirate Bay from his DOC-issued laptop. Can't have such a wide-open door for viruses and all.

  2. And yet TPB lives by skaag · · Score: 5, Funny

    I find it amusing that while all this is going on, nobody is able to shut it down.
    Which is great because that's where I like to search for my Linux ISO images.

    --

    All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...

    1. Re:And yet TPB lives by Buggz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The incident Warg was convicted for, data breach and releasing said data on the internet, is unrelated to The Pirate Bay. It's like saying Lindsay Lohan was convicted for acting, which I guess could be the case but you get my point.

    2. Re:And yet TPB lives by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's like saying Lindsay Lohan was convicted for acting

      Which, all things considered, is not such a bad idea, which makes it a crappy analogy, though.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  3. Data Breach by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He isn't going to jail for running TPB, but instead for doing something clearly illegal and just uncool in general. I don't see a problem with it.

    The old lesson learned again: Don't go high profile and piss off the man if you have skeletons in your closet.

  4. Justice is for the little people by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In London during the riots, a man was sentenced to six months jail for stealing a bottle of water.

    However, the bankers crash the economy, cost taxpayers £130 billion pounds, threw millions out of work due to their negligence and criminality -- and NOONE has gone to jail. In America, the problem is made worse because it's actually Obama Administration policy to not prosecute bankers for fraud.

  5. He can practise his Unix skills by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    /usr/sbin/chroot /jail sleep 1892160000

  6. Re:Look up Sweden's prison pictures on google.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's about rehabilitation. Seems to be more effective than punishment (see USA PMITA prison system).

  7. the model is broken, but the machine still moves. by nimbius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you cant destroy the pirate bay by simply arresting its founders, or any other torrent tracking system for that matter. its ludicrous.
    the internet as a system and community enacts a sort of triage when this happens, and its geometrically faster than the litigation the **aa tends to favour.
    One could argue rather convincingly that the advent of the magnet link was the downfall of the tradtional model of litigating peer-to-peer to death. Call me a cheerleader, but im sure Anakata understands that seven months of involuntary detention is no more an inconvenience than being roped into a particularly bad vodaphone contract.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  8. Re:Crucial by HappyHead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Part of the problem here is that he does often come across as a drug addled terrorist, and judges almost universally tend to not only find against people who do that, but also tend to put the maximum sentence on them, in the hopes that during their time in prison, they'll come out of their drug-addling, and actually notice where they are. (Yes, sometimes that's hopeless optimism.) Gottfrid may be partially responsible for some wonderful technology being popularized, but he's also responsible for a lot of horrible things as well (google "Potentialprostitutes" and "extortion" for an example) - calling on Karma for this really doesn't weigh in his favor.

    Yes, Logica and Nordea did fail to protect their customers from people doing bad things, but that doesn't mean the people doing the bad things shouldn't be punished for it. If anything, Logica and Nordea deserve a bit of punishment too - much like if a school bus driver decided to take the kids through a rough section of town (as a shortcut!) and some gang member shoots the bus up - yes, the bus driver should be in a lot of trouble for that, but that doesn't mean that the gang member who shot at the bus should be let off, even if nobody was hit.

  9. Re:Look up Sweden's prison pictures on google.... by Peter+Bortas · · Score: 4, Informative

    "And I know outside of Oslo they have an island where you can "go to jail" and just live as normal with a house and stuff."

    You are thinking of Bastøy, Norways possibly both cheapest prison and the one with the lowest reoffending rate: ~15%.