Everyone’s favorite illegal file sharing provider, Pirate Bay, has come under the scrutiny of Swedish lawmakers, who sentenced each of the websites primary founders to a year in prison for their part in turning the internets into “a sort of Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy” (Thank you, Andrew Lloyd Webber).
First line starters, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom where found guilty of copyright infringement and fined $3.5 million by Judge Thomas Norstrom, who conveniently sits on the board of Sweden’s leading intellectual property advocates.
Can you say conflict of interest? Well, the four horseman of the copyright apocalypse certainly can and have filed an appeal for a mistrial, which will essentially delay their prison sentences by at least another two years.
However, a retrial could also potentially vindicate the Swedes and spare them from 12 months of unsolicited prison rape, should a new judge side with their legally sound, but total bullsh*t argument that they never took part in any actual file sharing and that it was in fact the butler who did it.
Pirate Bay’s legal woes mirror those of Napster, who eventually caved into peer pressure and shutdown their billion dollar revenue stream for the music industry.
Good thing they learned absolutely nothing from that cash cow.
Tags: Conflict Of Interest, Napster, Pirate Bay, Prison Rape