While Captain Phillips and the Navy Seals were fighting off Somali pirates, a different kind of piracy was being debated in Stockholm. Four men involved in a file-sharing Web site called Pirate Bay were found guilty this week of collaborating to violate copyright law.
The men, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, were sentenced to one year in jail and also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several well known media companies including Warner Brothers, Sony BMG and EMI. The prison terms are part of a guilty verdict in the Swedish criminal case; the damages were part of a civil case brought by a number of media companies. The latter is considered only a partial victory, since the companies had asked for almost four times more in their lawsuit. Interestingly, the verdict did not require Pirate Bay to be shut down.
Pirate Bay allows users to exchange files including movies, music, games and software; the site does not host the files itself. It claims more than 3.5 million registered users since it first began in 2003.
The fight over Pirate Bay - and copyright - became more about morality and business than it did about technology. Many of those involved in the early adaptation of the site consider themselves pioneers in a new world, where online communication should be free and open. And, they point out, they aren’t actually putting the copyrighted material on the site; they’re just helping people find it via a peer to peer system.
Of course, those opposed - mostly big names in the media business - see it differently: they believe users of sites like Pirate Bay to be thieves. Media companies claim they have been hurt by companies like Pirate Bay to the tune of $6 billion a year.
Internet piracy is growing at a faster rate in Europe than anywhere else in the world according to the MPAA. A host of factors are at play, including increased broadband use, weak laws and lenient public perceptions. Will this case change all that?
Founder Magnus Eriksson doesn’t think so. He says, “Piracy does not have a head that you can cut off, and The Pirate Bay is just a technology allowing communication, a part of the Internet infrastructure.” It will be interesting to see whether he’s proved right.
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