The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty

[nsane.forums]

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were "assisting in making copyright content availableâ" and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty - backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

Today, Friday April 17, the court issued its decision. Here are the main points relating to each defendant (continually updated live);

Peter Sunde (born September 13, 1978) alias ‘brokep’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison

Fredrik Neij (born April 27, 1978) alias ‘TiAMO’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison

Gottfrid Svartholm (October 17, 1984) alias ‘Anakata’:

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison

Carl Lundström (born April 13, 1960)

Verdict: Guilty - 1 year in prison

The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as ’severe’. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.

While the court did not agree with the plaintiff’s estimates of losses (around $12m), it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). This a hugely significant amount and the court has ordered that the four should pay this amount between them.

The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.

At one point the judge was asked if he was concerned for his personal safety after handing down this decision. The judge said he hadn’t received any harassment and was quite surprised at the question.

Peter Sunde has already explained that this decision does not mean the end of the line in this case. There will be an appeal which means we are still far away from the ultimate decision - possibly years away. The case is now expected to move to the high court. Both sides have three weeks to file a written appeal.

As for the fate of the site, Peter has already promised that The Pirate Bay will continue. The site itself was never on trial, only the four individuals listed above.

View: Original Article

[Potrzebie]

Here is the entire verdict (in Swedish...)

http://www.sr.se/Diverse/AppData/Isidor/files/83/6276.pdf

[Toshiro]

That really sucks.. There's no reason for such a punishment..

first, they don't own/host the files @ there website, it goes through people's bittorrent..

second, you can't say they insisted you to download cracked sh!t, cuz I've never seen "WE INSIST YOU DOWNLOAD THE TORRENTS FROM OUR SITE AND YOU MUST CRACK THE SH!T OUT OF IT"

So the punishment is kinda shitty..

[Sonar]

Another HUGE site down... Whats next?

RIP TPB :dance2: It hasn't gone yet! lol

[manpe]

I've heard to Mininova has had some problems lately. Anyway, it sucks... The verdict is bullshit and you can't make me believe that this sentence is according to the law of Sweden. It was purely because of political pressure from the world.

[Ambrocious]

This really pisses me off! TPB will never be done away with even if they are going to jail...

[Rock Lee]

My feelings are the same as Ambrocious'. Jail is far too harsh for this but hey what can you do?

[bob1234]

I will probably get some shit for this, but I'm sure you guys can handle a somewhat dissenting opinion :dance2:

I'm actually kinda glad that this came back guilty. Sure it will be appealed and then maybe they will be acquitted and that's fine. At his stage though, I'm glad it turned out this way. As far as I'm concerned, TPB has been shoving itself in everyone's face for a long while. It's one thing to host a site like that and advocate those kinds of views, but to turn everything into a publicity stunt and constantly wave your flag in everyone's face gets to be quite annoying and pretty much puts a big, glaring target on your ass. Legality aside, I hope this is going to at least make them reconsider a tiny bit about how much they blatantly flout the rules. Even if they legally have not done anything wrong, I think their strong pressure to keep sharing so prevalent (which, let's admit, is significantly composed of piracy), is backfiring on them.

I've tried to summarize my feelings here very briefly, so maybe they didn't come across as clearly as I'd hoped. Does anyone agree with me though? I'm really not trying to side against TPB, but more so trying to express how TPB's actions and general attitude doesn't really help their image in court (again, legality aside). Therefore, this guilty verdict might change their stance to one more of being constructive in their goals rather than that of being rebels.

[Rock Lee]

I agree somewhat with you bob. I said that jail was too harsh but the points you brought up were spot on.

They did make it seem like the 'spectrial' was the only thing going on in the torrent scene & while it was

the biggest, the verdict didnt surprise me. Yes, earlier I did state that even though the heads of TPB were

getting locked up, TPB wouldnt fall. I stand by that 100%. But as far as them making this deal humongous

with the "king kong defen©se" and other sites like H33t blowing up this story, it wasnt neccessary.

[manpe]

Well, yeah... too much publicity isn't what you want when dealing with piracy (even if it is legal, you still don't want the attention). So I guess this is one thing they did wrong.