Pirate music website founders jailed

THE men behind one of the world's largest illegal downloading sites were today found guilty of breaking copyright law.

Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison.

They were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor (£2.4 million) to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

The Pirate Bay provides a forum for its estimated 22 million users to freely download music, movies and computer games through so-called torrent files. Millions of files a day are exchanged using the service.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

The servers are located outside Sweden, so it is unlikely today's verdict will result in them being switched off. The men pledged to appeal against the ruling. Sunde earlier claimed on Twitter that he had been leaked the verdict. He wrote: "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.

"Nothing will happen to The Pirate Bay, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just theatre for the media."

Music industry body International Federation of the Phonographic Industry welcomed the verdict. It estimates tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007.

Its CEO John Kennedy said: "The court has handed down a strong deterrent sentence that reflects the seriousness of the crimes. This is good news for everyone who is making a living or a business from creative activity."

The British Phonographic Industry association's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "Sites like the Pirate Bay seriously undermine investment in music and legal online services and do nothing to reward artists.

"We hope this decision will encourage British music fans to steer clear of these parasitic illegal services and support the future of British music by downloading legally."