The founders of The Pirate Bay again have problems: the Finnish court decided to pay $ 477,000 in favor of the copyright holders
The Three Founders of The Pirate Bay: Fredrik Ney, Gottfried Svartholm and Peter Sunde The Pirate Bay’s
most pirate resource has been around for many years, despite attempts by copyright holders to limit its work or close it altogether. At the same time, the founders of the “bay” are constantly located between the hammer and the anvil. As soon as one trouble ends, another begins.
This time, Fredrik Ney and Gottfried Svartholm were convicted by the court of violating the rights of several companies-owners of rights. First of all, we are talking about music labels. As punishment, the defendants will have to pay about $ 477,000. The case against The Pirate Bay and its founders was not initiated now, but in November 2011.
It was then that the Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), with the support of the Finnish anti-pirates from the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC), filed a lawsuit against The Pirate Bay.
As for the first of these organizations, it represents the interests of several major labels. Its main task is to track and stop illegal activities to distribute licensed content as a result of illegal actions of “pirates”. As mentioned above, the trial lasted as long as six years, and as a result, the founders of The Pirate Bay were still found guilty of distributing unlicensed content. Behind the lawsuit and the organizations mentioned above are labels such as Entertainment Finland, Universal Music, Warner Music, and EMI Finland.
As far as one can understand, those same $ 477,000 respondents will pay together. Nothing is known about their financial condition, but I would like to hope that it is still easier to pay a little more than $ 200,000 per person than almost half a million to everyone (if, of course, they decide to submit to the court). They did not participate in the meeting, which was another factor that led to the appropriate verdict - because no one challenged the prosecution, there were no lawyers either. The court decision was made in absentia.
Another founder of the resource, Peter Sunde, was accused of having contributed to the illegal distribution of music records of more than 60 musicians who work for the Sony Music label. Of course, the distribution of content was carried out for a reason, and through The Pirate Bay. This defendant was also sentenced to pay $ 412,000 in damages to copyright holders and $ 65,000 as additional expenses (perhaps this refers to the cost of the lawsuit with attendant costs). He, like his colleagues, was found guilty in absentia — Sunde did not appear. After the corresponding verdict was passed, the defendant told reporters that he was going to file an appeal. “I am a public person in Finland, and they called me a criminal, although they know that they are not involved in what they accuse me of. This is an insinuation, ”said Sunde.
Peter Sunde, Fredrik Ney and Gottfried Svartholm did not receive the court’s decision on the need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the right holders. For 8 years, they turned out to be large sums to the plaintiffs of various trials. But not a single payment has yet been made, so another verdict in favor of the plaintiffs simply increases the amount of the unpaid bill, and that’s all.
By the way, last year, Sunde said that the whole system of torrents, in general, is vulnerable. He expressed this opinion after closing KickassTorrents: “It seems to me that people do not understand that several sites are not enough. Because everything depends on these resources. I have always wanted, instead of large targets, such as KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay, there was a giant hybrid consisting of a huge number of smaller sites. "
Sunde also believes that the "mirrors" will not save the torrent resource from blocking. An example is the same closed KickassTorrents. According to the founder of the “bay”, after the closure of this resource, the administration was not able to restore its work, although it really wanted to. Yes, the network is full of copies, but they work autonomously, and KickassTorrents users cannot use their account data to work with mirrors. Also co-founder of The Pirate Bay complained about the lack of "frames" in the field of copying content. Plus, the pirate scene lacks decentralization, in a technical sense. Sites like The Bay and KickassTorrents could use Zeronet and IPFS, but so far this has not been the case.
I also recall that it was Peter Sunde who declaredthat he favors the closure of The Pirate Bay. In his opinion, the resource is outdated and something new is required on the pirate scene, something that most torrents do not have.