Legal News

?I Owe You.? The Pirate Bay Quartet Defiant After Conviction

By Ashby Jones

LB Readers, we’re impressed. At the end of a recent post about the criminal trial of the owners of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, we asked whether you thought the accused were heroes or criminals. What broke out in the comments was a smart, lively and thought-provoking debate (We’re choosing to stay agnostic in the debate, caring only to comment on the insistence of the “The” in the name, which we absolutely love.)

Wrote “Anonymous,” for example: “Guilty as sin and they know it. They're exploiting a loophole in Swedish law claiming they're doing no wrong. . . . ”

Countered “Antonio“: “These things are getting silly. The RIAA and MPAA need to embrace the technology, not try to destroy it.”

In any event, sorry Antonio, the Swedes have lowered the boom: Earlier today, the The Pirate Bay folks (three of whom are pictured) were convicted of breaking Sweden’s copyright law. In what’s being called a “landmark” ruling, the Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison. They were also ordered to pay damages of — gulp — 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures. Click here for the AP story.

Defense lawyers had argued the quartet should be acquitted because the Pirate Bay doesn’t host any copyright-protected material. Instead, it provides a forum for its users to download content through so-called torrent files. The technology allows users to transfer parts of a large file from several different users, increasing download speeds.

The court wasn’t buying it, finding the defendants guilty of helping users commit copyright violations “by providing a Web site with … sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and through the tracker linked to the Web site.”

But how’s this for brazen: In a video clip posted on the Internet, Sunde called the ruling “bizarre” and said it would be appealed. He also dismissed the damages ruling, saying “we can’t pay and we won’t pay.” He held up a hand-scribbled “I owe U” note to the camera. “This is as close as you will get to having money from us,” he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).