Avast ye Hardies Yo-Ho

Another kind of pirate than the Somalis made the news recently when the four men behind The Pirate Bay were convicted in April of violating Sweden’s copyright law. The Pirate Bay is (was?) a file sharing site similar to Napster. The four were convicted of helping millions of users download music, movies and computer games without paying. The Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom (who financed TPB) each to one year in prison, and imposed a fine of 30 million kronor (about $3.767 million) to a bunch of media conglomerates such as Sony, EMI, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Brothers. TPB became digital content’s public enemy number one after Kazaa and Grokster were forced down. TPB suggested somewhat humorous responses to cease and desist letters, informing the writer that Sweden was not a state in the United States. TPB’s technology allowed parts of a large file to be transferred from several different users. Defense lawyers argued that TPB didn’t host any copyright-protected material. They lost anyhow.
-- Paul Marotta