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This could be a small win for corporate greed, but somehow I think the internet is a little to big for their money grubbing to contain.
“The men linked to the Pirate Bay file-sharing site were defiant on Friday after a Swedish court found them guilty of breaking the country’s copyright law.
The Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison for “assisting making available copyrighted content.”
They were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($4.3 million Cdn) to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.”
An appeal is already in the works so the founders are not currently in jail or responsible for paying some silly amount of money.
“But the group said any verdict would be appealed, and the website home page carried a message equally defiant:
“As in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow,” said a message posted to the site. “That’s the only thing Hollywood ever taught us.”
Peter Sunde, one of the four founders of the site, said in a video posted Friday the court’s ruling was “bizarre.” “It’s so bizarre we just have to laugh about it, it’s unreal,” he said. As for the damages awarded, Sunde said the number was meaningless. “They could have gotten one billion,” he said. “We can’t pay and we won’t pay.”
Predictably, hollywood is crowing about their victory.
“This is an important decision for rights-holders, underlining their right to have their creative works protected against illegal exploitation and to be fairly rewarded for their endeavours,” Glickman said in a statement.”
Creative protection. What a load of hoo-haa. They really mean is that they want access to an unending stream of royalties from these so called protected works. See Lawrence Lessig’s work on how they have gamed the copyright system to work for them in their favour.
Stay tuned, this case is far from over.
Read the first part here and part two here , part three here part four here if you need to catch up.
Conclusion: The Digital Revolution: Evolve or Die.
“In order to secure for individuals in society an adequate information environment, we would have to provide for resource spaces within which no one is susceptible to manipulation by others, at least not as a result of legally-backed rights to provide or deny access to information and communications resources. We also would have to secure sufficient minimal access to the means of producing and exchanging information and cultural expressions so as to provide to all a robust and diverse set of perspectives on how life can be lived and on why life is better lived one way than another.”
-Yochai Benkler -SIREN SONGS AND AMISH CHILDREN: AUTONOMY, INFORMATION, AND LAW
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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