On April 17, four men who run the Web site Pirate Bay in Sweden were sentenced to one year in jail and over $3 million in fines for copyright infringement. The men were ordered to pay the fines to entertainment industry companies, which claim to have lost millions of dollars in revenue to Web users downloading their products for free.
Pirate Bay is a file-sharing Web site. It connects Internet users with other computers around the world that have music, movies, and video games on them. By going to Pirate Bay, users can connect to these other computers and download the content for free. The convicted owners of Pirate Bay claimed that what they were doing was not illegal, since they did not have any copyrighted material on their site. They argued that they were simply pointing users in the direction of the copyrighted material. But the court ruled that since the site was specifically designed to help users illegally download copyrighted material, the Pirate Bay owners were guilty of breaking copyright laws.
Some analysts believe that this will become a landmark case that affects copyright laws around the world, but others believe that it will not have much effect on illegal file-sharing. There are currently no international copyright laws. A company that runs a file-sharing Web site like Pirate Bay can simply move to a country that does not prosecute for copyright infringement. Since the Internet is available to anyone around the world, it does not matter to users where the company is located.
The four owners of Pirate Bay have refused to pay the fines, and have said that they will appeal their convictions.
Related Links
- Court Jails Pirate Bay Founders
Report from the BBC on the arrest of the Pirate Bay owners, and the issues surrounding the case.
(Source: BBC, April 17, 2009) - Pirate Bay’s Fileshare Four Get Year in Jail
Reuters article covers the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders and includes the reaction of Peter Sunde, one of the four men convicted.
(Source: Reuters, April 18, 2009) - File-Sharing “Pirate Bay” Operators Get Torpedoed
Story from National Public Radio covering the men’s conviction and the copyright issues involved in the case.
(Source: NPR, April 17, 2009) - Map of Sweden
Map of Sweden from the University of Texas. Shows the country and its neighboring countries in Scandinavia and northern Europe. The trial of the Pirate Bay founders took place in Stockholm, the country’s capital.
(Source: The University of Texas)
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