Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, the four original key Pirate Bay founders, have been acquitted by a Belgian court on charges of criminal copyright infringement and abusing electronic communications.
All four defendants have denied having anything to do with the site since was seemingly sold to a Seychelles-based company called Reservella in 2006, and this proved a major hurdle for Belgian prosecutors as the crimes were allegedly committed between September 2011 and November 2013. A judge at the Mechelse Court ruled that it could not be proven that the four were involved in the site during the period in question.
Indeed, for at least a year of that period, Svartholm was in jail in Sweden while connecting Lundström to the site a decade after his last involvement (which was purely financial) has always been somewhat difficult.
In the end, even the site’s anti-piracy adversaries in the case agreed with the decision: “Technically speaking, we agree with the court,” said Olivier Maeterlinck, director of the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA).
https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founders-acquitted-in-criminal-copyright-case-150710/ and http://www.techworm.net/2015/07/the-pirate-bay-founders-and-financier-cleared-in-criminal-copyright-case.html
SABAM, the Belgian collection society for authors, composers
and music publishers, has launched a legal action against the country’s three biggest
ISPs, arguing that they should be paying copyright levies for offering access to
their members' copyrights. No stranger to the courts, SABAM wants the court to rule that Internet access
providers Belgacom, Telenet and Voo should pay 3.4 percent of their turnover in
copyright fees for the use of music, because they make substantial profits from
offering high speed Internet connections that give users easy access to
copyright protected materials – legally and illegally – whilst hiding behind
their status as intermediary “without taking responsibility for the information
transmitted over their networks”
In a press release, SABAM noted that since 2000, revenues
generated from music featured in the physical media (primarily CD sales) have declined
by 54 percent, adding that this “huge loss” has not been compensated by
collections from online services like iTunes, YouTube and Spotify.
SABAM have been asking for voluntary levies from ISPs since
November 2011 and have now launched their claim in the Brussels Court of First Instance.
