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BREAKING NEWS: The Pirate Bay four convicted

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

The IPKat has just learned from the BBC website (he thanks the many readers who are still sending him links!) that a Swedish court has sentenced the four men who masterminded The Pirate Bay -- the world's most high-profile file-sharing website -- to a year's imprisonment. The four (Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde) have been convicted of criminal copyright infringement and must also pay 30m kronor in damages.

While the news broke officially today, the four learned of their conviction yesterday. Sunde sounded a note of irony when he commented: "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release". Predictably the news has been welcomed by copyright owners and the organisations representing them, while users have expressed disappointment. The four have announced their intention to appeal.

Says the IPKat, the copyright industry has to play this carefully: the step from cheeky if illegal benefactor of the file-sharing public to copyright martyr is a small one and martyrdom, once established, provides an inspiration and a rallying call for others who sympathise with the cause. Merpel muses, since the defendants were the world's leading exponents of BitTorrent file-sharing, there is no truth in the rumour that they will be released from prison in bits ...

Full post as published by IPKat on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).