Pirate Bay Found Guilty: Jail Time for Founders
Today, a court in Sweden found four members of the Pirate Bay guilty of breaking Swedish copyright laws and sentenced them to a year in prison and a $3.6 million fine - a third of what the prosecution had asked for. The Pirate Bay and its lawyers will, of course, appeal the verdict, and the site will continue to function normally during the appeals procedures.
While the Pirate Bay is quite infamous for its defiant answers to legal threats, the Pirate Bay team has been unusually quiet about the ruling (besides calling it a 'crazy verdict' on its site). You can, however, find an improvised interview/'press conference' with Peter Sunde, one of the co-founders of the Pirate Bay, on the service's site. In the interview, Sunde compares his site to Google, as the Pirate Bay has always argued that it only offers the ability to find torrents, but doesn't host any illegal information itself. The Swedish court, however, argued that the site's purpose was solely to disseminate copyrighted material (an argument that isn't hard to make when you look at the top 100 shared torrents on the site right now).
The entertainment industry, as Mike Masnick points out on Techdirt, will celebrate this as a major victory in the fight against piracy, but in reality, shutting down the Pirate Bay will do little to deter filesharers and won't help the entertainment industry regain any lost market share or find a new business model.
It is also important to note that even though the Pirate Bay may be the most visible torrent-sharing site right now, others like Mininova host almost as many torrents.
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The Piratebay won't be closed down, even if they eventually is put in jail (Many years until that happen).
And the Movie/Music industry won't see the cash neither.
The only winners in this war is the pirates since the Music/Movie industry is pretty hated right now due to this and the IPRED law that has recently been approved in Sweden which won't have any effect either.
So as it looks now, filesharing is here to stay for many many years.
Solution to file sharing by category:
Applications: Software as a Service
Games: multi player subscription
Music: concerts
Movie: product placement
Book: advertising
Porn: uh... live cams
:)
Do they think it will stop people from pirating shit?
Hah!
What may be significant in the ruling - or at least the award of damages - is that there is not a one-to-one relationship between an illegal download and a lost sale. If there was, the award would have been far higher.
What then is the calculation?
As if our courts have nothing better to do than look out for big business's interests. I think they need to throw the whole damn case, and any other like it out. It's a witch hunt if you ask me. They most likely spend twice as much on lawsuits than they lose to piracy. They're so ate up with greed they think some sap that downloaded a copy of their mediocre film that they wouldn't have bought anyway is killing their profits. Well, maybe their not quite that stupid, it's really more for the cause. See, once they start winning these cases, it won't be like it is now. It will be a full blown witch hunt where places like The Pirate Bay don't get a day in court, they just get shut down, fines, and prison.
They need to realize that there are pros and cons in any business. You can't lock down media with profit friendly your only goal. People buy movies, music, games, etc.... to enjoy, not to have to be inconvenienced by all the restrictions greed has put upon it. Here is a business tip for all. Treat your client/customers with respect, keep the buyers interests in mind, and fix problems at your expense. When problems like piracy arise.... that's your problem, not the customers. Every industry has losses... learn to accept yours.
piracy has been a huge issue ever since napster in 2000, now 9 years later its still a huge issue, i really dont believe piracy will stop anytime soon, the demand for downloading free music and movies is just too big and putting people in jail isnt gonna stop people from pirating music or movies. justaskgemalto.com has some pretty insightful info on this.