Just when you thought the story about the American taken hostage by Somali pirates would be the only pirate-related news this week, the four founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison. NME reports that Pirate Bay’s founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom were also ordered to pay £2.4 million in damages to record labels at the sentencing in Stockholm.
The Streets’ Mike Skinner, who released 3 new songs for free this week on Twitter and plans to drop 3 more next week, responded to the verdict: “I think the attitude that music should be free is wrong and [The Pirate Bay founders’] attitude sucked. artists should be selling music but cheap,” he tweeted.
In a video on thepiratebay.org, Kolmsioppi reacted to the monetary portion of the sentence, saying, “Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the final dust from the burning.”