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    Why Pirate Bay will continue to sway

    The Svea Court of Appeal will give their verdict in the Pirate Bay trial tomorrow. As the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter today asks, is the verdict of any actual interest? Will a conviction actually affect the music and movie industries, or the ones downloading illegally? After tomorrow, the guys behind Pirate Bay may not continue to sway, but their site and file-sharing most likely will.

    In April 2009, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström, the guys behind Pirate Bay, were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and were sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 30 million SEK (approximately 4.3 million USD). They appealed, and tomorrow, 26 November 2010, the Svea Court of Appeal will announce its verdict.

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    The guys behind Pirate Bay have more than 30 million reasons to pray for a verdict of acquittal. A conviction tomorrow would definitely affect them. But for the site itself and the 20 million people downloading movies and music using Pirate Bay, a conviction won’t have any specific impact. Neither will the movie or music industries gain much from such a verdict. The reason? The Pirate Bay trial deals with the specific technology used at the time of the indictment. Today file-sharers play around with new technology developed to make it really difficult to track down any person who is file sharing.

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    What is there for the movie and music industries to learn? Well, it has been said plenty of times before, by plenty of others, and representatives from the movie and music industries are probably bored to death from hearing it. Yet, it can’t be said enough. They have to evolve, because there’s nothing to gain from fighting strong development. This actually goes for any industry that wants to survive.

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