Sweden wants to increase prison term for infringement of copyright to six years

Exactly ten years ago, Sweden became one of the first countries in the world, which opened a criminal case against its citizen for pirating digital content. On January 31, 2008, the Swedish prosecutor’s office brought charges against the four founders of the torrent tracker ThePirateBay.org . The prosecutor's office calculated that on advertising banners, pirates (in the photo on the left) earned at least 1.2 million kroons ($ 120,000), and demanded compensation for this amount to the copyright holders, threatening in addition with imprisonment. In those days, it seemed absolutely incredible to go to prison for torrents - and the whole world was closely watching the fate of the guys from The Pirate Bay.

The raid on The Pirate Bay began two years before, when in May 2006 the local police, at the initiative of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), searched the torrent tracker servers. The site went offline for three days, and after that its attendance has doubled.

During the three-day trial, the prosecutor could not explain the principle of the operation of distributed hash tables, allowing the use of magnet links, and the prosecutor’s office dropped some of the charges. At the same time, the right holders demanded to compensate $ 14.3 million of lost profits. Sentence was delivered on April 17, 2009: Peter Sunde, Karl Lundström, Gottfried Svartholm, Fredrik Ney (the last two in the photo above left) were found guilty, they received 4 to 10 months in prison with a fine of € 2.7 million $ 3.5 million). Within ten days after the announcement of the verdict of the court of first instance, more than 25 thousand people joined the Pirate Party of Sweden . As a result, she took the fourth place among all the Swedish parties and was recognized as the largest youth movement.
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But it seems that history teaches nothing to the Swedish authorities. The government concluded that criminal penalties in Sweden “seem too lenient” for violators of intellectual property laws compared with punishments in other countries.

The issue of prison sentences for pirates rose after the trial of a 50-year-old administrator of the small local torrent tracker Biosalongen (Screening Room), which the authorities closed in early 2013. He was first found not guilty, but then, but after an appeal in the summer of 2015, the Court of Appeal of Gothenburg sentenced him to 8 months in prison. The administrator appealed to the Supreme Court, which established the following : if the offender is found guilty after the trial, and his guilt is less than 1 year in prison, then in this case the prison should be considered as an extreme case among all punishment options, although " some crimes are of such a nature that imprisonment should be applied on general preventive grounds, even if the sentence is less than one year. ” But in the case of piracy, there is no reason to necessarily imprison the offender if the sentence is less than one year.

Probably, the prosecutor's office and the Swedish Ministry of Justice understood this conclusion of the Supreme Court in their own way. They decided that if a person could not be imprisoned for less than a year for violating intellectual rights, then the measure of restraint should not be changed, but ... increase the sentence!

As a result, Justice Minister Helen Fritzon (Heléne Fritzon) made a proposal to increase prison sentences for large-scale violations of intellectual property laws and “serious” trademark violations: “In cases of gross crimes, a person may be convicted of a gross violation of copyright sign and sent to prison for at least six months and no more than six years, ”said Dag Mattsson of the Department of Justice.

In determining the term of imprisonment, the court will take into account the amount of damage caused to the right holders and the amount of profit received by the violator. In addition, the issue of confiscating tangible and intangible assets of a pirate, including domain names, is being considered.

Changes in legislation should come into force on July 1, 2019.

If the punishment for piracy is really increased to six years, then the founders of The Pirate Bay will only have to rejoice in the fate that they have already served their sentence under the old criminal code.