A crowd of journalists press to get a copy of the Pirate Bay trial verdict on Friday.Stockholm, April 17, 2009 – In a landmark decision, a Swedish judge on Friday gave jail sentences to four men for breaking Sweden's copyright law by helping millions of users freely download music, movies and computer games on the internet.

The four include three founders of Pirate Bay, the world's most famous file-sharing site, and a patron.

The Stockholm district court sentenced to one year in prison Gottfrid Svartholm Varg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom.

They were also ordered to pay damages of $3.6 million to a series of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

The men were on the Pirate Bay website, which provides a forum for its estimated 22 million users to download content through so-called torrent files.

The site has become the entertainment industry's enemy No. 1 after successful court actions against file-swapping sites such as Grokster and Kazaa.

Defense lawyers had argued the quartet should be acquitted because The Pirate Bay doesn't host any copyright-protected material.

Instead, it provides a forum for its users to download content through so-called torrent files. The technology allows users to transfer parts of a large file from several different users, increasing download speeds.

The court hearings renewed debate about file-sharing in Sweden, where many defend the right to swap songs and movies freely on the internet.

Source: Agencies

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