The four founders of popular file-sharing website Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, have been sentenced to a year in jail after being found guilty of copyright offences.
Pirate Bay is a site that offers files for download to thousands of users, from the new albums or films to a collection of games for a games console.
On top of the prison sentence, they have been ordered to pay fines to the overall sum of $4.5m (£3m) to a number of record companies including EMI and Sony Music Entertainment. However, the damages they w ordered to pay fell short $17.4m of what the record companies were asking for.
The group were found to have assisted copyright violations by allowing thousands of users to download and share copyrighted files.
Whilst record companies have welcomed the action taken by a court in Sweden, the group have described the verdict as "bizarre" and Sunde said he would refuse to pay the fine.
Pirate Bay is a site that offers files for download to thousands of users, from the new albums or films to a collection of games for a games console.
On top of the prison sentence, they have been ordered to pay fines to the overall sum of $4.5m (£3m) to a number of record companies including EMI and Sony Music Entertainment. However, the damages they w ordered to pay fell short $17.4m of what the record companies were asking for.
The group were found to have assisted copyright violations by allowing thousands of users to download and share copyrighted files.
Whilst record companies have welcomed the action taken by a court in Sweden, the group have described the verdict as "bizarre" and Sunde said he would refuse to pay the fine.
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."The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded don’t even come 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."
In my eyes, while this case is getting so much media coverage, file-sharing sites are going to be overwhelmed with people searching for TPB and finding out how easy it is to download what they want without the ski-high price tag that comes with buying it on the high street or online.
I doubt that there will be a high level on consistency so there will still be P2P sites out there and it seems a general opinion that the Pirate Bayers will be rearing their heads again soon...
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