Pirate Bay Founders’ Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected

Wow. This is has probably been one of the most corrupt legal processes Western Europe has seen since WWII. Unbelievable how a foreign industry has made a complete mockery out of the justice system of a sovereign nation.<p>The damages alone are an insult. Yeah, let's not look at actual damages, let's just use Hollywood fictional bookkeeping.<p>Today also happens to be the day I've lost access to the Pirate Bay through my ISP because a corrupt judge decided Hollywood profits trump my civil liberties.<p>It is so very depressing to see how Hollywood has completely corrupted our legal and political systems to the point were civil liberties are being gutted. This can no longer be tolerated.

It would appear that it's a mistake to commit white collar crime without being an American bank. [1][2][3][4]<p>[1] "70% of early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications" - <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articles/diagnostics_white_collarcrime.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articl...</a><p>[2] "half of all the loans called sub-prime, were also liars loans. Liars loans means that there was no prudent underwriting of the loan" - <a href="http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black-why-nobody-went-to-jail.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/09/william-black...</a><p>[3] "how many criminal referrals did the same agency do, in this crisis. Remember it did well over 10,000 in the prior crisis. Well the answer is zero. They completely shut down making criminal referrals" - ibid<p>[4] "In 2003, Freddie Mac coughed up $125 million after it was caught misreporting its earnings by $5 billion; nobody went to jail. In 2006, Fannie Mae was fined $400 million, but executives who had overseen phony accounting techniques to jack up their bonuses faced no criminal charges. That same year, AIG paid $1.6 billion after it was caught in a major accounting scandal that would indirectly lead to its collapse two years later, but no executives at the insurance giant were prosecuted." - <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=4" rel="nofollow">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-stre...</a>

The worst part of this is the assorted fines imposed on the founders of TPB. The prison sentences probably won't amount to much...I don't expect brokep to serve time (I have been following his situation for years now), which is good news.

At least that was Swedish court. Had it been in the USA they could have faced 4, 6 and 10 years of imprisonment, and $6.8 trillion damage to the RIAA and MPAA.

Good luck finding them.<p><a href="https://www.flashback.org/t402278" rel="nofollow">https://www.flashback.org/t402278</a><p>For those of you who don't read Swedish, it's a thread about how anakata, one of the founders, talks about going AWOL from the Swedish bureaucratic system.<p>Utan känt hemvist == no known place of residence.

With the ludicrous patent wars going on among the biggest tech players, increasing piracy and ever-increasing cases of countries bending over backwards to placate entertainment industries; the whole Intellectual Property paradigm is ripe for disruption. The sad part is that the prevalent political practices will make it very difficult to come to a reasonable solution, a point of stable equilibrium. Consumer advocacy and freedom rights' groups have a very feeble voice right now and this issue will take a lot of activism and rationality from the common folk before it can reach a sane conclusion. I only hope issue doesn't undo the leaps humanity took when internet was invented (and I'm not exaggerating)!

Now that these three have been charged with "paying back what was stolen," all our file-sharing is off the hook, right?

Am I the only one who doesn't feel bad for these guys? The Pirate Bay was always set up to try to infringe copyright, and I don't consider it a legitimate form of civil disobedience.<p>I don't like the MPAA, RIAA and others either, but sites like the TPB are not helping matters.

For hosting file hashes and connecting people with same hashes. For free (only search engine was polluted with ads, you didn't have to use it though). In no way is this comparable to what Megaupload (and others) were/are doing.

We have something in America called "being an accessory" to the crime. This means that you stood by without attempting to stop the crime, even though you learned that it was about to happen.<p>Say that you're riding in the car with a friend when he suddenly pulls over. He looks at you and says, "I'm going to rob that bank over there." If you do nothing to stop him you become an accessory to that crime—and can be convicted by the judge for it.<p>What is claimed in the discussion here is that TPB is an accessory. They had knowledge but did nothing about it, and cannot be held accountable for their users, right? Arguably, since TPB created a site to share torrents on and had no piracy policy (but taunted everyone that complained) they become accomplices! They <i>help</i> the end-pirate find where to get his contraband.<p>We aren't talking about MegaUpload. At least with MegaUpload they can argue that there is no description of the file, and no way for them to inspect the data. No, we're talking about a site where it FLAT OUT SAYS that "this torrent has the cracked version of ..." or of a movie that hasn't been released yet.<p>Did you ever see a warning banner for piracy? Or a "warning, you must be 18+ to pirate these files?" So TPB can't be an accessory, and they can't be uninvolved. Just like you'd be held accountable if you handed a bully a baseball bat.<p>Oh, yeah, but that's <i>US</i> law. And <i>US</i> pressure on a foreign power. I agree with the anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA and anti-Hollywood sentiments expressed ... but when it comes down to a foreign country <i>harboring</i> pirates and saying, "Sorry, we can't do anything about it: it's legal here." Do you think that ANY world power would just drop it? Of course the US pressured Sweden to prosecute a group harming its economy/trade interests.<p>I can't believe how many here are <i>defending TPB</i>.

With SOPA, ACTA, PIPA, the MegaUpload situation and now this, these really are dark times for the internet.

This is oddly opportunistic timing.