http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/04/17/pirate-bay-trial-ends-in-guilty-verdict/1

Have seen lots of people booing the Swedish courts over this, saying its an unfair sentence.  The defendents are appealing and site goes on however.  Ever used the site?

Some further insight via the Pirate Bay press conference with one of the guys here.

I never really used Pirate Bay. I preferred other sites.     

The last time I used a torrent was on Kazaa I think - someone bought me a copy of Hitman 1 that didn't work.  I downloaded another copy off Kazaa which also didn't work. Then realised it was my computer. :P

Not saying I've never been a filthy pirate, but it was when I was much younger and naive.  Technically the Pirate Bay guys are innocent since they are only the owners of the site, it's other people who are hosting the pirate stuff.  This is the loop-hole that most other torrent sites have used.

Seems a bit ridiculous to expect to get away with it though when 90% of your traffic are the millions of people that are 'sharing' copyright content, and then call yourself The Pirate Bay.  

Maybe they were trying to make a point, although I'm not sure what. :s

When are Google getting it for linking to torrents?

Well the Pirate Bay dude does mention the concept of sueing Google for the same infringement - but at the end of the day I dont use TPB daily to search for anything and everything.  Google provides us with much more through its use than it takes away with other people's abuse.

Theres definitely a grey area though as to how much of your traffic needs to be illegal before it becomes your responsibility to do something about it.  There's promoting freedom by allowing people to use your tech how they want, and there's knowingly allowing mass theft to happen right in front of you and not doing anything to stop it.

I suppose its about intention.  TPB can deny any intention of assisting piracy, but you'd think they would have called it something else then.

They're doing it for democracy and freedom of speech because the older generation of politicians doesn't understand this at all. Or so they say ;)

One of the problems with the whole thing was that they also made lots of money from advertising and donations. And they do have their own trackers which didn't help in this case.
They were also a bit too confident at times during the trial but kind of got the seriousness of it all judging from the latest interviews. 
Sometimes the prosecutor made some weird statements which made him look dumb. The Pirate Bay guys got a bit cocky then in court and in blog posts. But I read some article from an expert lawyer in such matters where he said that the prosecutor was planning some things by behaving in a certain way in court. Maybe this was the case indeed judging from the outcome.

its called the pirate bay, how can they act stupid? 

It's nothing more than loophole legislation.

They're guilty of piracy, whether they can prove it by law or not, it's just a matter of how long they can fight national and corporate litigators.

They have already moved all of their servers to the Netherlands from what I have been reading, and as you all have already mentioned TPB still goes on so who is this a win for at the end of the day? The movie, gaming or music industry? Not likely.

Let's face it, fighting piracy is a complete waste of time, money and resources. Copyright laws and their verbiage is what really needs to change. Anyway, I never used TPB instead I have used ISOHunt based out of Vancouver here in Canada who incidentally are facing their own legal problems as well. Like Sweden though, Canada has some rather questionable laws regarding piracy.

At the end of the day this is just a way for organizations like the MPAA to release statements to the public about how this is a monumental victory for actors, directors, producers and artists, and to flex some imaginary muscle for a few minutes before reality once again sets in and everyone goes back to pirating the hell out of whatever they can. Same shit happened when Napster was shut down as the music industry danced naked in the forest of dillusion marvelling at their "monumental victory". And while they were busy giving each other high fives, even more p2p music "sharing" websites popped up with more people than ever "sharing" their legally bought music.