Sweden - The Pirate Bay trial

Sweden sentences Pirate Bay founders to one year in jail

Article published on the 2009-04-17 Latest update 2009-04-17 16:02 TU

Reporters crowd around a clerk (C) to receive copies of the landmark verdict in the Pirate Bay file-sharing trial in Stockholm on 17 April 2009.
(Photo: Reuters)

A Swedish court found four men guilty on Friday of violating the country's copyright law, and sentenced them to one year in jail in a landmark ruling.

The court ordered that the four -- Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstroem -- to pay the entertainment industry damages of 2.72 million euros. The industry had sought more than three times that amount in 10.6 million euros.

The four men are founders of one of the world's most popular file-sharing websites, The Pirate Bay.

A comment posted on The Pirate Bay website read: ""As in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing Hollywood ever taught us."

Peter Sunde defied the court ruling by saying the court's ruling is "so bizarre we just have to laugh about it".

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay," he added in a live broadcast following the court ruling.

Sunde also wrote to his more than eight thousand followers on the social networking website Twitter, saying: "Stay calm - nothing will happen to [The Pirate Bay], us, or file-sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media."

"We are of course going to appeal," defence lawyer Per Samuelsson told Swedish Radio.

The website, which was founded in 2003, claims to have some 22 million users worldwide. The court did not rule for the site to be shut down.

Swedish police raided the company's offices several times and seized nearly 200 servers in 2006, leading to the site's temporary shutdown.

A few days later the site was up again wither servers spread among different countries.