Pirate Bay Team Jailed and Fined £3 million

In a landmark ruling, a Swedish court today ruled against the team behind the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.  All four have been sentenced to a year's prison and received a collective fine of 30 million Sweidsh kroner, around £3 million.

The site's three admins, Frerik Neij, 31, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 25 and Peter Sunde, 31, and investor Carl Lundstrom, 49, who financed the site, were all found guilty of "assisting copyright infringment."  Although record companies welcomed the decision, an appeal is almost certain to follow.

The judge, ruled that the four men had worked together to run the site, and that they were perfectly aware that copyrighted material was being illegally shared via torrents uploaded to The Pirate Bay.  They were therefore considered to have facilitated widespread, organised and commercially-motivated infringement of copyright.

The court did not, however, award the amount of damages asked for by the record companies, who had initially asked for 117 million Swedish kroner, but this was capped 30 million, to be divided equally amongst the four men.

Long before today's verdict, Sunde had indicated that the next course of action would be to immediately appeal the verdict.  The case could drag on for years before a final verdict is reached.

In the meantime, The Pirate Bay is to remain online and continue operating as normal.