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Appeal denied

February 2, 2012

The decision by Sweden's Supreme Court not to hear the appeal of founders of a controversial website, convicted of copyright violations, may not come as a surprise but could have huge implications for the the Internet.

https://p.dw.com/p/13vkv
STOCKHOLM 20080201 The founders of the file sharing web site Pirates Bay was charged with violations against the copyright laws at a court in Stockholm, Sweden, January 31, 2007. Foto: Claudio Bresciani / SCANPIX +++(c) dpa - Report+++
The verdict against The Pirate Bay standsImage: picture-alliance/dpa

Sweden's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday not to hear the appeal of four founders of controversial The Pirate Bay website, the world's largest clearinghouse of peer-to-peer BitTorrent filesharing.

Carl Lundstöm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde were denied appeal. Together with fellow founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, who was ill and did not attend the appeal, the four men now face prison sentences of between 4 and 10 months and a combined fine of 46 million kroner ($6.8 million).

All four have since moved abroad, and it is unclear when and how they will need to pay up and sit down in jail.

'Already seeing implications'

Their jail sentences and fines signal tough penalties ahead for filesharing entrepreneurs accused of copyright infringement by courts claiming to endorse the principles of copyright law.

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (alias brokep) (born 13 September 1978 Uddevalla, Sweden) is a Swedish IT spokesperson with Norwegian and Finnish roots.[1][2] He is best known for co-founding The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.[3] Segments of an interview with Sunde talking about copyright, the Internet, and culture are featured in the 2007 documentary Steal This Film. *** This work is labeled as Kopimi, meaning that the copyright holder of this work does not only release it, but specifically requests that this work be used and copied for any purpose, including unlimited commercial use and redistribution. It is believed in good faith that a work classified as Kopimi is free to use in any way, including modification and the creation of derivative works.
Peter Sunde was sentenced to eight months in prisonImage: cc

"We are already seeing some implications of the decision," Marten Schultz, a law professor at Stockholm University, said in an e-mail to Deutsche Welle. "Representatives of the rights holders have issued public statements that they will take this decision as a starting point for a crackdown on filesharers and especially on services that facilitate (illegal) filesharing by others."

Sweden's Anti-Piracy Bureau told Stockholm's local newspaper Aftonbladet that it was preparing a new offensive against filesharers.

On his blog, Sunde admitted that he and his colleagues were "not surprised" by the court's refusal.

"The previous court cases have been (full) of corruption" with the minister of justice "pressured by the US to illegally make a case against TPB," he wrote. "It was clear to us that the Supreme Court – where many of the judges make a lot of money on their own copyrights – would be hard to persuade to take the case."

Logo des Betreibers "The Pirate Bay"
The Pirate Bay was founded by four Swedes in 2003

Domain seizure

Apart from poking fun at Swedish courts, Sunde stressed that TPB has been at the forefront of the country's important freedom of speech movement, "working against corruption and censorship." If he does end up serving the time, Sunde said it will give him time to finish writing his book.

Meanwhile, the filesharing website has taken down its main site and is now redirecting traffic to a Swedish mirror, thepiratebay.se. The action appears to be a defensive move to avoid domain seizure by US authorities.

A lawyer for Lündstrom told Swedish newspaper Dagen Nyheter that the decision was "absurd," calling for lawmakers and legal scholars to examine the technical legality of torrent services.

Author: John Blau
Editor: Cyrus Farivar