The Pirate Bay on trial: Four men are accused of helping millions of internet users download copyrighted material. The industry has called on internet service providers to censor such websites.
Last week the trial involving four men accused of helping millions of users download movies, games, software and music through their site The Pirate Bay begun in Stockholm. Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Carl Lundström face up to two years in prison, damages of €10 million and a €115,000 fine for facilitating the distribution of copyrighted material.
The trial dubbed “spectrial”, as the defendants considered it a spectacle, has not gone according to the IFPI’s (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) plans thus far. Half of the charges against the men were dropped as the prosecutors fumbled on defining The Pirate Bay as the source of the Bittorrent files (The Pirate Bay’s computer servers never actually hosted any copyright-infringing files) and the defendants have been gaining notoriety by using their Twitter accounts to ridicule the case ranging from expressing boredom (“#spectrial is so boring. It’s sleepy”) to joy at their supposed winning of the case (“EPIC WINNING LOL”).
