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Friday, April 17, 2009
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Laywers to Appeal in Pirate Bay Case
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A lawyer of one of the defendants in the the Pirate Bay case has filled an appeal against the guilty verdict of the Stockholm district court, which has ordered the four involved in running popular BitTorrent tracker to pay US$3.6 million in damages.
The lawyer of Carl Lundstr?m, who was found guilty in the case and was sentenced to pay $905,000 plus 1 year in prison, filed the appeal at the Stockholm district court immediately after the court announced the final verdict for the case last Friday.
According to the appeal, Lundstr?m did not know about the main crime -- yet he was still sentenced for being an accessory to crimes against copyright law. The appeal maintains that you can't be sentenced as accessory to a crime you don't know about.
The laywers of the rest three defendants are expected to follow with more appeals soon. They have until May 8 to file their appeals.
The court said that the four defendants worked as a team, were aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy and assisted the infringements. It categorized the infringements as 'severe'. The judge said that the users of The Pirate Bay committed the first offense by sharing files and the four assisted this.
"The court has found that by using Pirate Bay?s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case," said the district court. "This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances."
While the court did not agree with the plaintiff?s exaggerated estimates of losses, it still set the damages at 30 million SEK ($3,620,000). This a hugely significant amount and the court has ordered that the four should pay this amount between them.
The judge also stated that the usage of BitTorrent at The Pirate Bay is illegal. Rest assured, other torrent sites hosted in Sweden will be keeping a close eye on developments.
According to the Friday's rulling, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundstr?m were sentenced to pay $905,000 on damages each and 1 year in prison. |
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