The Pirate Bay

Yesterday saw some pretty monumental news as the administrators of The Pirate Bay – one of the top BitTorrent trackers – were convicted by a Swedish court and handed down hefty sentences. The trial had been going on for some time, and it looked as though the Pirate Bay guys were actually winning at one point; on the 2nd day in court prosecutors were forced to drop some charges. Yesterday though the guilty verdict was announced and the 4 men were convicted of “assisting the distribution of illegal content online”. The penalty was a year in jail for each of them and a $3.6m (£2.4m) fine. There’s been a ton of stuff written in the wake of this and I won’t bore you with the same critique as the major news media, but I do want to address one thing. The impact on artists themselves. Read the rest of this entry »