The four men behind The Pirate Bay will go to court Tuesday to appeal their sentence of one year in jail and $905,000 each in fines. Eight trial days will occur before October 15.
It’s been a rough ride for the surprisingly resilient BitTorrent website, which shut down its tracker 10 months ago but remained operational in a bare-bones sort of way. The advocacy organization that founded the site closed its doors in June.
In April, Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of assisting in making illegal downloads of copyrighted content possible. All four pleaded not guilty and appealed the ruling, essentially claiming that they weren’t responsible for how people they had never met used their technology.
As TorrentFreak notes, this appeal is light on flair or publicity, unlike the original case. The first case was a media frenzy. Its developments were prominently featured all over Twitter, tech blogs and even mainstream media. This time, not even The Pirate Bay, which is known for mocking its enemies, has acknowledged that the appeal is currently taking place.
We’ll know the result of the appeal in a couple weeks, but if the defendants choose not to resume their social media blitz, you might have to wait for the upcoming documentary about The Pirate Bay to see the inside story.
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