Just when you thought the NEW story about an American taken hostage by another group of Somali pirates would be the only pirate-related news this week, the four founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison. After an entertaining trial replete with posturing, theatrics and serious cockiness, the four co-founders of the torrent site were found to have been accessories to copyright infringement, each face a year in prison, and must pay $3.5m in damages to Sony, Warner Bros, Columbia Pictures and others.
They even Tweeted (twote?) their verdict before anyone else could get the drop on the story.
In a video on thepiratebay.org, Kolmsioppi reacted to the monetary portion of the sentence, saying, “Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the final dust from the burning.”
I'm sure this isn't the end, since their servers are still up at another undisclosed location.
Meanwhile, President Obama tapped RIAA attorney Ian Gershengorn to join the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. This is the 5th RIAA attorney to join the DOJ —not a promising precedent for file-sharing proponents.
Again, not a good week for pirates.
1 comment:
look, the pirate bay ain't going anywhere - it was just a high profiled case... but with Hulu and YouTube out there streaming is becoming an actual option over bittorrenting.
Your other comment about riaa lawyers in the doj? So what, half the firms in america were/are hired by the riaa. good luck finding someone who wasn't hired by them.
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