Guilty: Pirate Bay Founders Will See Jail Time
The founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and an investor, Carl Lundstrom, will collectively pay 30 million kronor (about $3.55 million) in fines and each spend a year in prison, according to BBC News and numerous other reports covering the decision.
Kolmsioppi, who has been updating a Twitter feed throughout the trial, wrote, "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theater for the media."
He added in another Twitter post that the four defendants first heard the guilty verdict late Thursday night after word of it leaked. "Really, it's a bit LOL," he wrote. "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."
The original charges against The Pirate Bay's owners alleged copyright infringement, but the charges were downgraded to "assisting copyright infringement" two days into the start of the trial in February.
Lawyers for the defense argued throughout the trial that because The Pirate Bay does not actually host the files -- it indexes and tracks Bit Torrent files, but they are stored on the computers of users -- it's not breaking any laws.
The damages go to a group of recording and entertainment industry companies represented by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), including movie and music heavyweights such as Universal, Warner Bros., MGM, Sony BMG and 20th Century Fox. The IFPI companies had sought 117 million kronor (about $13.3 million).
"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," said IFPI Chairman John Kennedy to BBC News following the verdict.
Kennedy, who during the trial described The Pirate Bay as being the "No. 1 source of illegal music" in the world, said the amount of damages awarded "doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did."
The Pirate Bay has listed between 22 million and 25 million users since its debut in 2003. When the trial itself ended on March 3, Kolmsioppi expressed confidence its founders would be vindicated. Earlier this week, he told BBC News that there "was no difference between us and Google."
The Pirate Bay site itself was still active on Friday morning, and there was no word on whether it would be closed down following the guilty verdict. Several videos have been posted to The Pirate Bay's home page where unnamed representatives have in Swedish and English been answering questions, received through Twitter, about the verdict. As of 9 a.m. EDT Friday, the most recent video had been viewed more than 106,400 times.
A few comments also have been posted to the home page, presumably by the founders, that read:
"So, the dice courts judgement is here. It was lol to read and hear, crazy verdict. But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing hollywood ever taught us."
Illegal downloading has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Europe, where France's National Assembly earlier this month tossed out a three-strikes rule that would have cut off the Internet access of suspected pirates after a "graduated response."
In the United States, the role of ISPs in fighting illegal downloading has also come under scrutiny, especially the extent to which ISPs such as AT&T, Cox and Comcast are working with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to root out suspected downloaders.
