Four men who created The Pirate Bay - one of the world's best-known file-sharing websites - have been jailed.
A new milestone has been created in the ongoing debate over file-sharing networks, following the jailing of four men behind website The Pirate Bay (TPB).
The site is one of the most famous file-sharing networks on the internet and has achieved notoriety since proceedings against its four creators began. A court in Sweden has now ruled that Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde have broken copyright law.
On top of being sentenced to a year in jail, the group have been told to pay 30 million kronor (£2.4 million) in damages.
However, the men have remained defiant, with Mr Sunde posting a message on social networking site Twitter claiming: "Nothing will happen to TPB, this is just theatre for the media." He later added: "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."
Many in the entertainment industry, who claim they lose out on profits as a result of file-sharing, have called on the authorities to crack down on the practice in the past. Earlier this month, the new Hugh Jackman film X-Men Origins: Wolverine became the latest high-profile film to appear online before it had officially been released.
However, the issue appears far from resolved, as millions of internet users continue to share media online, while the award of damages by the Swedish court fell short of the 117m kronor (£9 million) requested by the entertainment companies involved.
