This morning a Swedish court handed down its decision in the case against the four men behind The Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest file-sharing site. They were found guilty of breaking copyright law and sentenced to a year in jail.
Defendant Peter Sunde made a Twitter posting that said:
"Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media."
He said he was given the verdict last night, although it wasn’t due until today.
"It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release," he wrote.
The four were also ordered to pay $4.5 million in damages. They are to appeal, and Sunde has said he will not pay the fine. At a press conference he said:
"It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that were were as a team. The court said we were organized. I can’t get Gottfird out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime."
"We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes."
Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg are the men behind The Pirate Bay, deemed to be one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites. A fourth defendant, Carl Lundstrom, was also in the dock for helping to finance the site. No files are shared directly through the site.
Earlier this week Sunde told the BBC:
"We don’t share any files we just link to material. We don’t say what people should or should not download.”
"It’s open platform, an open technology, for people to find and share content. There’s no difference between us and Google."
"We think we have a responsibility to not check what people are linking – it’s a privacy issue."
Speaking about the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries and Motion Picture Association of America, both of whom lobbied for the case, Sunde said:
"They are both abusing the court case to get some media attention and are scared of people like us because we point out flaws in the system."
