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Pirate Bay defendants found guilty, though no actual files found

A Swedish court on Friday found the four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay case guilty, sentencing each to a year in jail. The defendants were also ordered to pay a total of 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of American media giants. The four men--Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundström--were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site

After a 13-day trial, judge Tomas Norström, plus his assistant and three namndeman (essentially a jury with extended powers), found ample evidence for a guilty verdict, though no actual files are stored on the Web site. As a result of a civil claim filed alongside the criminal case, the four men will have to pay $3.6 million in compensation for lost sales to 17 media companies. Among them are Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision.

CNET News

Posted by | Fri, Apr 17, 2009 - 09:12 AM