Court Issues a Verdict on The Pirate Bay Appeal: Guilty
Remember that back in the spring of 2009 big media companies took The Pirate Bay to court? To be specific, big media companies like Sony and Warner Bros sued the three The Pirate Bay (TPB) co-founders, Fredik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, and the dot com millionaire who helped them out, Carl Lundström.
Back in April 2009 the court concluded that the 4 defendants are guilty of “assisting in making copyright content available” and issued the following sentence:
Peter “brokep” Sunde: 1 year in prison.
Fredrik “TiAMO” Neij: 1 year in prison,
Gottfrid “Anakata” Svartholm: 1 year in prison.
Carl Lundström: 1 year in prison.
All the defendants were ordered to pay $905.000 in damages each, which amounts to more than $3.6 million.
Things did not stop there. The 3 co-founders of The Pirate Bay and Carl Lundström appealed the court’s decision. Every TPB fan out there was hoping the court of appeals would see the light and issue a verdict in favor of the defendants. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The Swedish Court of Appeal found the defendants guilty of “contributory to copyright infringement” and issued the following sentences:
Peter Sunde: 8 months in prison.
Fredrik Neij: 10 months in prison
Carl Lundström: 4 months in prison
The defendants have to pay the big media companies $6.5 million in damages
Gottfrid Svartholm’s case will be reviewed later due to medical circumstances.
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Notice that the amount of money the defendants have to pay has increased considerably? According to the Swedish Court of Appeal, this was because “the court of appeal, to a greater extent than the district court, accepted the plaintiff companies’ evidence of its losses as a result of file-sharing.”
Notice that the prison sentence has gone down? That isn’t exactly good news. People charged with “assisting in making copyright content available” or “contributory to copyright infringement” do not get jail time – usually. The TPB founders and Carl Lundström got jail time because the court wanted to make an example of them.
“They’re giving us jail even though it’s not the right thing for the 'crime'. It’s just to scare people. That’s what you did in the 1600s…,” Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak, site that specializes in everything torrent-related.
Peter Sunde said that big media companies have not won just yet; this matter will be taken all the way to the Supreme Court.
Please note that all these legal battles have no bearing on The Pirate Bay site, only on Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström. The four aren’t even involved with the site anymore. The Pirate Bay site, which is owned by Reservella, a company based in the Seychelles, will go on as usual.
Remember that back in the spring of 2009 big media companies 