After the recent Limewire lock-down, this might shake you up a bit. Three out of four BitTorrent based The Pirate Bay founders were charged guilty of contributory copyright infringement by the Swedish Appeals court reported TorrentFreak. The court has reduced the prison tenure but increased the amount payable as damages to the entertainment industries. Three out of four Pirate Bay Founders - Peter Sunde, Fredik Neij and Carl Lundstroem are now equally liable for total damages worth $6.5 millions from initial $4.6 millions.


Last year in April, the Pirate Bay founders - Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom were found guilty for copyright infringement under Swedish law through The Pirate Bay website. The music label lawyers were successful in proving that these four people helped in sharing copyright bearing multimedia files. Eventually all four guys were declared guilty and sentenced year each in jail. All four were equally liable to pay $4.6 millions as damages.


The Pirate Bay is BitTorrent file tracker heaven for the online sharing of music, videos, movies, software and other files. Four Vikings argued that the Pirate Bay was merely a search engine. But infact the Torrent files offered that can be used by BitTorrent client software to download the entire file.


After the April verdict, the appeals trials took place in Sept. and Oct. duration. Svea Appeals Court announced its decision of upholding the Appeals of three founders. As per the court s decision prison sentences of Peter Sunde is eight months, Fredrik Neij is 10 months and Carl Lundstroem is four months. Court stated that the Pirate Bay has facilitated illegal file-sharing in a way that results in criminal liability for those who run the service. For the three defendants the court of appeal believes it is proven that they participated in these activities in different ways and to varying degrees. Warg s appeal trial is yet to take place because he was suffering from illness and hence couldn't be part of this trail.


There, there. These four men aren t related to The Pirate Bay anymore so nothing will happen to the site. Peter Sunde did share the plans of appealing to Supreme Court as soon as possible. It's not over yet.