Down To Business

Verdict in #spectrial: Guilty

The unanimous verdict in #spectrial is that all four are collectively found guilty. The Court went on the Prosecutors line.

According to the Judge who gave a press conference after the verdict had been released, the four Frederik Neij (tiamo), Gottfrid Svartholm Varg (anakata), Peter Sunde (brokep) and Carl Lundström have worked as a team, they know that material that was copyrighted when it went through The Pirate Bay tracker. This is why they were found guilty to have assisted in copyright infringement.

The Court decided the crime was severe and handed out a one year prison sentence and damages of 30 million SEK / USD 3,5 million. This level of damages are almost never seen in the Swedish Court system as they want to keep the damages down.

The Judge said that they used a conservative view when calculating the damages. The Court agreed and used the same method presented by the Plaintiffs for the Nordic Movie Companies and dismissed the US Movie companies method as too uncertain.

The Judge also said that The Pirate Bay was a commercial enterprise. Since Finance is my background, I found it very frightening that the Court has gone on the Prosecutors word of this as absolutely no evidence were presented. No bank statement of the The Pirate Bay, no company accounts, no tax returns. The main piece was a signed agreement that was not executed upon and personal bank statements. This surely must be overthrown in the higher Courts.

We have to see this verdict as a trial run for the major Court cases. Learn where things went wrong and how to clarify the facts better. It is all about making our case understood by the higher Court. What we take for granted, they have not got understanding of. We need to improve our arguments to ensure that it gets received correctly by the members of the Courts.

The Judge also said the Court only focus was on the case presented and took not into any consideration of the principals implications that is attached to this verdict. I have to agree with this point as it is not the lower Courts purpose to set precedent, that should only come from the High Court.

Another point that the Judge said – that I can not understand – bit torrent technology is not illegal but was illegal used at The Pirate Bay. I am pretty certain that is what he said but if anyone else could add with more information, I would be grateful!

Judge also said that the main crime had been committed by the users of The Pirate Bay. If this is the case, then why are not they on trial. Surely the main crime should be a priority rather then to look at the ‘assisting’ parties.