A court in Sweden has sentenced the four founders of torrent network The Pirate Bay to one year prison, after they were found guilty of breaking copyright law.
The Pirate Bay was set up in 2003, and enables its users to exchange files – including copyrighted material – with one another using torrents. Since then, the site has grown rapidly and is now one of the biggest of its kind.
Although the files themselves aren’t actually stored on the site’s servers (but rather are downloaded directly from the PCs of other users, via ‘trackers’), the court has found the four defendants – Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde – guilty of copyright infringement, sentencing them each to a year in prison and ordering the four to pay GBP 2.4 million in damages.
With a wide selection of media available through the site – including pretty much every game you could ever imagine – the actual cost to the entertainment industry is likely to be many times more than that.
The four have already confirmed that they intend to appeal the verdict, and that the Pirate Bay will continue.
“The Pirate Bay will continue. Nothing is going to happen if we lose, for a multitude for reasons, not least because we will immediately appeal,” Sunde told the BBC.
