Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.
Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.
Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre.
"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.
"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised 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."
It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement
Read more at the dot.life blog
Q&A: Pirate Bay verdict
The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.
Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.
"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.
"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.
"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," he said.
Pirate Bay"s first server
The Pirate Bay's first server is now a museum exhibit in Stockholm
The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.
A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.
"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."
Political issue
Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".
"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.
Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research says what was different about Pirate Bay
"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.
"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."
The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.
Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.
No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.
"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.
"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised 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."
"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.
So what if they did make a little bit of money on the side? It's not like they charged for anything. It sucks that the court of law all around the world regularly misunderstands the technology they're judging.With the gigantic server park they need to survive the daily search and torrent download requests, I'd say it's not very likely they are making any kind of profit. I don't know exactly how they get the funds to purchase and replace their equipment, but the site's advertisements would probably only barely keep them in the black.
I never said I blamed them, but it looks a lot worse when you're trying to defend what you're doing if you're making money through some sort of piracy (whether it's legal or not) than if you don't profit from it.It shouldn't. Just like calling yourself a "pirate" doesn't incriminate you when all you are doing is running a perfectly legal and profitable business, such as a website that has revenue from its visitors clicking on the advertisements. Making money isn't illegal. It might make them look bad, but that's why justice is blind.
Remember when the TV links guy got arrested?
Well now I am seeing commercials for Hulu.
Now its time for the RIAA to go after those google bastards, whos huge index allows far more torrents than TPB to be easily located. And Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple for making those browsers which make pirating so easy.
Oh and Dell, Samsung, Phillips, Sony etc who make the hardware on which Pirated material is so easily viewed.
Ecetera.
Its pretty dumb to run a site like that and name it the pirate bay. Why not be a little more subtle about it and make an effort to mask the site's purpose?Because there's nothing illegal about naming a site The Pirate Bay? Neither is there (or rather, should there be) anything illegal about a site "like that". What are you even trying to say here? That they were bound to go down because "we all know what it's used for anyway"? The point of blind justice is to make sure exactly those things are out of consideration.
It shouldn't. Just like calling yourself a "pirate" doesn't incriminate you when all you are doing is running a perfectly legal and profitable business, such as a website that has revenue from its visitors clicking on the advertisements. Making money isn't illegal. It might make them look bad, but that's why justice is blind.
so this is not unexpected at all but it's probably going to set up lots of crazy legal precedences!That's what's scary about this case. If 'providing infrastructure' for unproven crime (done by the individual downloaders) is against the law and merits jail time, then we're fucked. Sites like Youtube would go down in an instant, or probably change very drastically. It's almost like arresting the gun salesman because the lawful sale of their gun *enabled* a serial killer to commit murder. Of course, the counterargument is that Pirate Bay did not have a means to ensure that their users had a right to download the things they did, but how the fuck do you do that? Best thing you can do is make a disclaimer and pin the fault on the individual downloader, which DOESN'T WORK but whatever.
Because there's nothing illegal about naming a site The Pirate Bay? Neither is there (or rather, should there be) anything illegal about a site "like that". What are you even trying to say here? That they were bound to go down because "we all know what it's used for anyway"? The point of blind justice is to make sure exactly those things are out of consideration.they knowingly profited off of a site that openly facilitated software/movie/music piracy. What I'm saying here is that anyone who is not an idiot can look at what happened to all the popular sites of this nature and maybe be a little bit smarter about it. :welp: I mean you can argue about how justice needs to be blind and all that 'till you're blue in the face but it doesn't change the fact that they painted a giant bullseye on their ass and should have probably been a bit more careful. What were they expecting? The RIAA and MPAA represent a multibillion dollar industry, whether or not you agree with them is a completely moot point because they're going to get what they want.
:words:This is probably exactly what they were expecting. They want to reform copyright law and are willing to challenge the system for it. They just did.
I mean you can argue about how justice needs to be blind and all that 'till you're blue in the face but it doesn't change the fact that they painted a giant bullseye on their ass and should have probably been a bit more careful. What were they expecting?
I thought file-sharing was totally legal in Sweden anyways?
Hidden content (Click to reveal)(http://www.lanacion.com.ar/anexos/fotos/64/987564.jpg)
this is the face of the son of a bitch
it still works for me.
yeah despite all this isn't 99% of Youtube's profits from like getting songs/music videos/tv shows/movies/anime for free and they just put up some emo fags to make it look like a legitimate businessyoutube makes a HUGE loss. it isn't even close to profiting yet.
because you don't have a right to be a pirateI bet you downloaded those Paramore albums!!
If I created a website that specifically allowed drug addicts easy, free access to drug dealers, would I be breaking the law?if you facilitated all the transactions you would be
I bet you downloaded those Paramore albums!!i listen to paramore on spotify the free legal music streaming service
joe i thought you didnt believe in intellectual property??well it exists and there's laws in place to protect it, so whether or not I believe in it doesn't really matter. :welp: Alls I'm saying is that it's pretty clear what the primary function of THE PIRATE BAY was and I'm not going to pretend to ignore the obvious agree that it's 'just like google' when the torrents/tracker is basically automatically pairing clients and seeders of pirated material. If you're gonna do or facilitate illegal shit, be smarter about it.
I don't think that whether pirating things SHOULD be legal or not is that clear. I actually think it should be legal. I dont know, I think its pretty obvious a lot of people share that opinion but lots of people try to cultivate some sort of piracy guilt, like that its OBVIOUSLY WRONG. I think its unfair to artists that piracy is that easy, but I dont think that makes it wrong.this is one of the dumber arguments against copyright I've ever heard. The house analogy doesn't even apply.
The way I see it is, the internet is slowly going to make the entertainment industry as it exists today obsolete. The 21rst century's technological situation has reduced the worth of popular media to almost nothing because of file sharing. Its terrible, its unfair to people who make a living out of it, but there's nothing they can do about it. You cant just undo technology. Their attempts at making people feel bad by calling file sharing theft are pathetic. Copy isn't theft. If you had a machine that could duplicate houses, using it would be unfair to house builders, but it wouldn't be theft. Fuck house builders, gimme my free house, and go build trains instead, or become a house duplicator machine repairman.
(also wow I just posted on GW for the first time in months)
this is one of the dumber arguments against copyright I've ever heard. The house analogy doesn't even apply.
Say you put your thousands of dollars producing an album intending to sell it for a small amount to recoup your expenses. Then someone comes along and gives YOUR work away for free. YOUR work that you put your time effort and money into. You think that is RIGHT?
Maybe if you had the ability to produce anything of value you'd think differently.har youre such a nice guy dom also selling art is my current source of income whoops
Maybe if you had the ability to produce anything of value you'd think differently.
I don't see how the house analogy doesn't apply, even your own argument works with it. The only bias the analogy has works in your favor: individual houses have to be built while one music track can be sold over and over again, so it would be a bigger loss to the house builders than to people in the music industry.it doesn't apply because it's not about intellectual property. you can clone a house design all you like, because your basic suburban house design isn't copyrightable, you're the one putting up the funds for building materials. this is in stark contrast to waiting for someone to finish something and then just distributing what they made.
Your reply to my argument is pretty much "But its unfair, people work on shit and spend time and ressources and they need compensation". I agree! I said that the situation is unfair to artists, but I don't think its wrong for the potential consumer to get the free version if its easy to obtain. Its unrealistic to expect people to choose to buy music en masse if the free version is just as easy to get if not easier, its like expecting people to send money to charities: it can happen but you sure as hell cant count on that. The music and movie industries have to change their approach entirely or are condemned to wither and die as torrents and shit become even more mainstream and easy.unrealistic is not the same as right. the current music model is flawed and definitely not sustainable, but that doesn't mean you have a right to put up a torrent of britneys latest album. and the industry IS moving forward, albeit slowly - i can listen to fully licensed music free on spotify right now.
The fact copying music is easy and accessible has made music as files essentially "worthless". Just like any image you find on the internet and can just save on your hard drive is "worthless". What still has a worth however is the intellectual property itself: while the music file is worthless by itself, the rights to use it in a movie or in some other commercial manner still has a high value.the analogies that the music industry use to combat piracy, however incorrect, do not make the act of copyright infringement acceptable. (im fully aware that actually downloading copyrighted media isn't illegal in itself - it's sharing that is illegal. although in the age of torrents the two are blurred. and BTW: ive never argued against actually downloading for this reason. my argument is purely against copyright infringement - illegal distribution. which is what the pirate bay do.)
Same goes for any image file you find on the web: You would probably pay the image's author if you were to use the file in a commercial job like a website layout, but you would never pay him to just stick it on your hard drive to look at it or as a desktop background, right? That analogy works pretty well because it establishes the difference between copying an image file on your computer, and the theft of the author's intellectual property. The music industry is trying to convince you that copying a file is stealing IP, and its not. Claiming you made it, selling it or using that song in your own movie is. They put a price tag on something that current technology has made "worthless", they cant blame you for not paying it. Its too bad that its become worthless, but its irreversible and they have to deal with the new situation. Trying to make laws for it is their current way of dealing with it and it probably won't work.
har youre such a nice guy dom also selling art is my current source of income whoopswell im sure glad you can just sit back and accept piracy as something that is fine and dandy like that. i feel that most people would have a bit more backbone in this matter, especially if it was their means of living.
Hey dom why don't you go screw off. Frankie's pro-piracy argument was dumb but it's irritating you'd say that to him when I'm pretty sure he's a good graphics guy and I've never seen you do anything creative. What does whether you are creative or not have to do with copyright laws, anyway?
I mean you say that an artist spends all this money to work on a project and then charges money for it once it's completed as if this is at all the way people accept it is in the world. Everyone knows that musicians get a tiny fraction of album sales, for example, with most of the money going into the record companies. Also, bands with record contracts don't just pay thousands out of their own funds to get albums made, record companies do this.it wasn't meant to be taken that literally dude. yes in this climate a lot of artists don't actually do that. but it was simplified. and still applies to a lot of media creation. your point really has no bearing on the discussion at all.
I mean if we were just talking about independent artists or filmmakers or whatever and whatever then maybe you've got a point there
but then again maybe not because I've never really considered intellectual property being bullshit until a few moments ago. I try to apply it to anything I have made or that I might make and I don't think I'd ever expect people to pay for music I made or something else.if you think intellectual property is bullshit you're an idiot, sorry. copyright law and the attitudes of corporations might be flawed in ways but the concept of intellectual property is very important.
because being creative is a prerequisite to creating something copyrightable.
it wasn't meant to be taken that literally dude. yes in this climate a lot of artists don't actually do that. but it was simplified. and still applies to a lot of media creation. your point really has no bearing on the discussion at all.
if you think intellectual property is bullshit you're an idiot, sorry. copyright law and the attitudes of corporations might be flawed in ways but the concept of intellectual property is very important.
I'm not necessarily arguing for piracy here, I'm just pointing out that your argument in that post isn't really relevant to most of the entertainment industry so you can't use the whole stealing money out of artists pockets thing as your cornerstone.it's entirely relevant because someone has copyright on the material and someones copyright is being infringed.
I just said I was considering it, you unpleasant motherfucker.and you shouldn't even consider it
it doesn't apply because it's not about intellectual property. you can clone a house design all you like, because your basic suburban house design isn't copyrightable, you're the one putting up the funds for building materials. this is in stark contrast to waiting for someone to finish something and then just distributing what they made.You are obtusely going too far into comparing houses and music. Any analogy breaks down if you over analyze them while missing its point on purpose. The point was comparing the work of going through building a house to the work of commercializing a song, with their respective costs and expected revenues, and then what happens when you take out the product's marketability by having new technology that takes out the worth of single units of the product (a single house vs. a single CD)by making them easy to reproduce. Whether houses are copyrightable or not is meaningless here. Analogies man.
unrealistic is not the same as right. the current music model is flawed and definitely not sustainable, but that doesn't mean you have a right to put up a torrent of britneys latest album. and the industry IS moving forward, albeit slowly - i can listen to fully licensed music free on spotify right now.I believe its entirely right to put up a torrent of Britney's latest album. Its Britney's right to try and stop people from sharing her songs in whatever way she wants, but If I have a music file on my hard drive, I can share it to whoever I want. Too bad for Britney. If they don't want me to be able to share it, make it impossible for me to record, because otherwise its up for grabs. It really is a big shame to artists who work strictly digitally, it makes whatever they make pretty much unsellable as units since no "real", physical version of the work can be sold, while a painter can sell a painting, which will always have a higher worth than say a digital photo of it (unless the digital artist keeps a high resolution version of his work and only prints out limited resolution versions, in which case he can try to sell a full-resolution print or something, but whoever buys it could then scan and distribute the fuck out of it... too bad...)
the analogies that the music industry use to combat piracy, however incorrect, do not make the act of copyright infringement acceptable. (im fully aware that actually downloading copyrighted media isn't illegal in itself - it's sharing that is illegal. although in the age of torrents the two are blurred. and BTW: ive never argued against actually downloading for this reason. my argument is purely against copyright infringement - illegal distribution. which is what the pirate bay do.)
well im sure glad you can just sit back and accept piracy as something that is fine and dandy like that. i feel that most people would have a bit more backbone in this matter, especially if it was their means of living.Right, I hold these views because I'm weak and cant stand up for myself and my intellectual property, not because I thought about it or anything. You are pretty condescending.
If I have a music file on my hard drive, I can share it to whoever I want.
Hey I can't access TPB. Does it happen to everyone or is the site banned in our place?Okay, this is getting annoying. Ever since this verdict the internet has seen a 10000% increase in posts from people asking whether The Pirate Bay is down for anyone else.
while the question of whether what trackers do is illegal is murky, there is no question that it -should- be illegal.
the main problem is whether or not telling someone where to get files is illegal.
and, it should be because: it's aiding a crime. actively. the pirate bay is an active accomplice in every single instance of copyright infringement that occurs due to the pirate bay tracker. this is what the verdict basically came down to, and i agree with it.
if you're 'outraged' in any way about this verdict because you feel that you have a right to be a pirate in any way, you're retardedI never could reply to this because I was gone for a few weeks, but man what a horrible argument. And I'm completely ignoring your decision to be as unpleasant as possible in conveying this. (Even though it's like you're trying to say "mine is the most inconvenient argument of all, therefore it is true", which warrants a response all by itself.)
I never could reply to this because I was gone for a few weeks, but man what a horrible argument. And I'm completely ignoring your decision to be as unpleasant as possible in conveying this. (Even though it's like you're trying to say "mine is the most inconvenient argument of all, therefore it is true", which warrants a response all by itself.)I'd also like to add that the Internet has helped A LOT of smaller labels get more money because they can advertise their products pretty much anywhere and contact with the customers is easier through the internet than let's say snail mail. Not only that, but a crapload of bands a lot of people listen to they wouldn't have known about them without downloading. I download a crapton of CDs, the artists I want to support (especially the smaller artists that aren't supported by a big money whore label) I'll buy their CDs, LPs and so on.
In case you didn't notice, the record companies that run that entire business are overcharging their products, underpaying their artists and stalwartly refusing to adapt to any modern advance (Compact Cassette, VCR, the internet), stating they'll "go out of business" if you so much as think about tainting their patronage with those copyright crime tools. Of course they've never been able to prove this, seen as how they're still raking in record profits, and the video game industry—which has been subject to internet-based copyright infringement much earlier than music and movies—is now bigger than the movie industry. While I don't expect laypeople to understand this, it's baffling that someone who's used the internet as much as much as you have to not get that this is about the impending dissolvement of large, monopolistic parties that have historically dominated this trade in favor of smaller, independent parties.
The reason piracy became a major phenomenon at all is because these content owners have obstinately refused to make use of these new platforms. They are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from happening. Yet everybody wants it to. It's like they're trying to swim back up the waterfall. Ultimately they'll have to give up and concede, because no business can survive if it can't provide its customers with the products they want. Given how the major copyright coalition and its puppet organization the RIAA have a functional monopoly over popular music, the only alternative people that's available right now is illegal downloading!
So, you think nobody has the right to be a pirate? Maybe. But isn't that the same as saying it's immoral to want to break out of the monopolistic grip of an ancient and obsolete organization that doesn't want to sell you the product you want?
All you're seeing here is the everyday occurrence of a company failing in a capitalist economy. Except for the fact it fights back by suing people and websites under looney legal principles and with flakey evidence, that's all this is! Explain again why we should feel so sorry?