Posted on 04/17/2009 6:47:21 AM PDT by tlb
The founders of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay have been sentenced to a year in jail in Sweden for breaking copyright laws by helping millions of users download music, movies and computer games for free.
The four were also ordered to pay $3.6 m (£2.4m) in damages to copyright holders, including Warner Brothers, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony and Universal, according to Swedish media reports.
In a Twitter posting before sentencing, Mr Sunde said: "Nothing will happen to TPB [the Pirate Bay], this is just theatre for the media."
The Pirate Bay provides a forum for its estimated 22 million users to download content.
But the court found the defendants guilty of helping users commit copyright violations "by providing a website with ... sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and through the tracker linked to the website".
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Today’s copyright laws are unreasonable;go back to the law as it was in 1970 .14 years is plenty long enough to make money on your movie ,song, or book then it becomes public.
There is no legitimate excuse for the government to maintain an outrageous monopoly that the music and movie industry have enjoyed for decades.
I think that the fee for copyright should be increased. Maybe along the lines of 10% of the total take during the life of the copyright.
Then we could watch HELLywood squirm.
Ahhh,......they give money to the Democrats. I see.
Hahaha.. but then you can’t have leeches getting free rides off of others works forever.
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