‘Nets Big Thing

If you’ve been following The Pirate Bay trial, you know that the verdict is due today. Unfortunately for the Pirate Bay Founders, and quite surprisingly given that the charges were partly dropped at the very beginning of the trial, the court has found them guilty.

Early reports from Torrentfreak that the verdict has already leaked (ironically, many of the charges against The Pirate Bay have to do with leaked copies of copyrighted movies and music), and that the Pirate Bay has lost, were true. Torrentfreak has gotten the info with site founder Peter Sunde, who he has heard the verdict early from a “trustworthy source.”

“Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file-sharing whatsoever,” he assures us, but this is definitely a big blow to all BitTorrent trackers around the world, and it might set a precedent for all similar cases in the future.

Update: the official verdict is out, and all four of The Pirate Bay’s founders are found guilty in ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström all receive one year in jail; they also must pay $3.6 million in damages.

Of course, this is not the end of this story. The Pirate Bay will appeal to the court, and there is a possibility that the verdict is reversed later. But the fact that the court has bought into the entertainment industry’s reasoning, which have at times been odd and unclear, is definitely not a good sign for The Pirate Bay.

On the other hand, even if The Pirate Bay loses the battle altogether and is forced to shut down further along the line, the entertainment industry has to understand that a thousand new pirate bays will sprout up everywhere. Can they sue them all? Or should they finally consider changing their business model and adapt to how Internet - the place that gives them previously unimaginable opportunities for reaching out to their customers - really works.

Tags: copyright, file sharing, piracy, the pirate bay, trial

source: The Pirate Bay Trial: Guilty As Charged