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The Pirate Bay verdict: 4-10 months prison, SEK 46 million in damages (Swedish) (svea.se)
60 points by yesbabyyes on Nov 26, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 25 comments



as someone familiar with the swedish prison system, 4-10 months will be cut down by a 3rd (a reduction for good behavior is automatically granted to each prisoner, unless proven otherwise.). A prisoner also has a nice private room with cable TV and internet.

46 million SEK is 5-6 million USD.


private room with a free cable TV and internet. would he still download movies from torrents?


They shouldn't go to jail for copyright infringement, even in the US it is not considered as a crime.

Article in English: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-appeal-verdict-101126...


Copyright infringement in the US is absolutely a crime, and 4-5 year sentences are not uncommon:

http://www.cybercrime.gov/ip.html



What will happen to website?


Whatever happens next, not much will change for the users of the popular BitTorrent indexer. The Pirate Bay website will remain online and operating as usual. None of the defendants are involved in the site anymore, and all assets are reportedly owned by the Seychelles based company Reservella.

From:http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-appeal-verdict-101126...


If you've read, "Catch Me If You Can", by Frank Abagnale Jr., then your opinion of Swedish prisons might be that they're country clubs where you get to sew parachutes and go to school for free, in comparison to those in the US. This doesn't sound so terrible, considering that this is a large scale criminal organization (whether you think what they did is a crime or not, the Swedish legal system has officially deemed it one).

The owners would have far more personal protection from legal in the US, though.


4-10 months jail time is like a vacation.


Swedish jails are not to be compared with those in the US or plenty of other places in the world but having your freedom to move restricted is still one of the harshest punishments that civilized countries inflict on their citizens.

I find it hard to believe that you equate that with that which we normally consider an expression of extreme freedom, that of traveling and having the freedom to organize your time any way you want.


Reddit once has a discussion with someone who was in a similar jail in the u.s. . except for lacking female companion , he liked it pretty much , and even said that's you're freer because you don't have all the responsibilities of a job and raising a family.


I reckon a Swedish jail is a lot nicer than being deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, where your freedom of movement is restricted and you are under constant threat from people who spend their days and nights trying to kill you.


You can only be deployed if you're in the army, most countries have volunteer armies. What is your point exactly ?


Sane people can, and often do choose to do things which could be considered worse than a few months in a Swedish jail.

Given a choice between a Swedish jail and a tour in Iraq, I would choose jail. But then I am not American, or Swedish.


Man, if not being allowed to move around much were the worst punishment the US could dole out, a lot of us programmers would be rampant criminals.


Have you ever been in jail ? Even for a day ?


Have you ever been to public school?


I think the harshest punishment is stripping you of privacy in both the bathroom and shower.


I think it is something people can get used to quite quickly.

If you look at the Romans, taking a dump surrounded by your friends in one of the Bath Houses was a good part of the day, so its not like abluting in public is something we are inherently opposed to as humans.


If jail time > 12 months, sentence = prison else sentence = jail


      elseif (sentences == consecutive){
        serve(time,chargeCount,jail)
      }
There are other variables, such as Jurisdiction, also impact how a person will be sentenced. Laws might differ a bit in Sweden though.

That code isn't very good. A person can serve >12months if the sentences are ran consecutively. Depending on the criminal, crime, and place, the person charged may want to be in prison instead of jail.


Are you sure that jails even exist in Sweden? I would be surprised. Isn’t that some kind of weird American quirk?

This brochure from the Swedish government [0] differentiates between remand prisons and correctional facilities (of varying security levels), no mention of anything else at all.

[0] http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c4/33/41/0feab306.pdf (PDF)


It looks like a 'remand prison' is similar to the common law 'jail'.

remand prison: Where people who are suspected of offenses and who have been detained by a court while waiting for trial are held.[from the link above]

[0] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Remand+prison


I’m seriously confused by the US law system and apparently, also by the Swedish one. At least I found out that in my native Germany “jails” (that’s how it’s translated) don’t exist any longer but apparently did until 1970. Germany has now only prisons, someone who is kept in custody prior to the trial is in exactly the same building as those who are properly in prison.


I meet someone on ChatRoulette once who was an intern at one of the courts in Germany. During our conversation it became obvious that English Common Law and Germanic/Salic Law are two different beast. It is important to remember that there is no universal set of rules, as cultures value things differently.




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