The founders of The Pirate Bay have been sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay a huge fine to entertainment companies after a Swedish court found them guilty of breaking copyright law. But will the ruling stop illegal filesharing?
Does the court ruling against The Pirate Bay mean that illegal online filesharing has been scuttled? It has certainly fired a powerful warning shot across the bows of those who would follow the site’s lead: The Pirate Bay’s co-founders, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij and Carl Lundstrom, have been found guilty of breaking Swedish copyright law and sentenced to a year in jail.
They have also been ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor (£2 million) to several entertainment companies named in the lawsuit, including Sony Music, Warner Bros and EMI, who accused The Pirate Bay of facilitating the illegal sharing of their copyrighted material.
Although The Pirate Bay did not itself host any of these files, it did provide links to other websites and torrent services where music and films could be illegally acquired. Nonetheless, the court ruling has fundamentally asserted the right of media companies to have their creative copyright internationally recognised and upheld, and to exploit this material as they see fit for financial benefit. It has also clearly demonstrated that even those websites which do not host illegal material, but simply point to it, can be held responsible for subsequent copyright infringement.
Re: What does The Pirate Bay ruling mean for the web?
Well from what I understand, the sentence was announced only for the owners .. the website was not under trial too .. so pirate bay should still be around, at least for now ..
Re: What does The Pirate Bay ruling mean for the web?
Pirate Bay site sold to game firm
The Pirate Bay looks set to have new owners in August
File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been sold to a Swedish gaming company.
Global Gaming Factory (GGF) has paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site from its founders.
Once it has taken control, GGF said it would start paying copyright fees for the movies, music and games linked to via the site.
In April, The Pirate Bay owners were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement, fined 30m kronor and were sentenced to one year in jail.
The four men behind the site, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, said they planned to appeal against the sentence.
The Pirate Bay is one of the most well-known file-sharing sites on the web. Many people use it to find copyrighted material such as TV shows, games and music tracks. The Pirate Bay does not host any of the pirated material itself.
"We feel that we can't take The Pirate Bay any further," Mr Sunde told the Swedish news agency TT. "We're in a bit of a frozen situation where there's not much happening and there are neither people nor money to develop things."
Half the money GGF will pay for the site will be in cash and the remainder in shares in the company.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site" said Hans Pandeya, head of GGF in a statement.
"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it," he said.
GGF has not released details of how it will charge for the content downloaded via the site. The Pirate Bay will be handed over to GGF in August.
What does The Pirate Bay ruling mean for the web?
Hybrid Mode
