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Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden.

Quote:STOCKHOLM — Three entertainment lawyers and a Swedish prosecutor demanded jail time Monday for the four defendants in The Pirate Bay trial, though they couldn't agree on how much. The prosecution is seeking a year in prison for each, while Hollywood is leaning toward the maximum two-year terms.

Defendants Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström face prison and fines as high as $180,000, for alleged contributory copyright infringement. In addition, motion picture and record companies are demanding $13 million in damages for 30 movies and music tracks they claim have been shared by internet users with the help of The Pirate Bay.

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall summed up his version of events in closing arguments Monday: Four criminal conspirators built a website for the purpose of promoting copyright infringement, and earned big bucks selling ad revenue on the site.

Roswall acknowledged that no pirated material was technically stored on or passed through Pirate Bay servers, but he compared the case to past prosecutions of criminal accomplices. In a Supreme Court decision from 1963, he noted, a defendant who held a friend's coat while the friend beat someone up was considered an accomplice.

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The problem with this legal accusation is that the pirate bay is essentially a search engine like google, yahoo and msn.

No, I would say the pirate bay is a much worthy thing than just a search engine. It offers concrete things to download, i.e. music, movies, applications etc. So one doesn't spend much time for searching them in, let's say, google and then search how to download it. The pirate bay is designed to download directly whatever you want.

Of course Hollywood will want a maximum term of detention for them. That's because Hollywood is unable to protect its author rights. But these people are not guilty, it's not them in person who makes the information available on the pirate bay. These are ordinary computer users, us.

I've always been using pirate bay for my needs. This outcome (that they'll be arrested) was foreseeable. They created themselves lots of enemies. Although they are professionals, but something must have been done in order to have protected themselves.

Hollywood representatives are asking for about 10.1 million euros for damages. In my opinion, this amount is not so high, it could have been worse... taking into considerations the millions of files exchanging due to this website.

Nathan Wrote:Hollywood representatives are asking for about 10.1 million euros for damages. In my opinion, this amount is not so high, it could have been worse... taking into considerations the millions of files exchanging due to this website.

why should someone pay for doing something good. I think there's no average internet user who never applied to piratebay search. It was useful, so we must support them

Hey Peach, imagine you were a producer who makes money by creating music, movies etc. Wouldn't you do the same thing? I mean ask for compensation if your copyrights were broken? I guess you would!

A team of four judges will to issue a verdict on April 17. The defendants are still ready for a $180,000 fine for each + damages + two years in prison.

The process has ended and the four guys were sentenced to one year prison each and were obliged to pay out to the entertainment industry damages amounting to $3.6 million.

tricker Wrote:The process has ended and the four guys were sentenced to one year prison each and were obliged to pay out to the entertainment industry damages amounting to $3.6 million.

They probably have very good lawyers. I thought the decision was going to punish them for more than 2 years in jail. Plus the amount of 3.6 million dollars is a miserable amount in comparison to what they earned allover these years.