The Stockholm District Court sentence against Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm was finalized today after he failed to appear at the Court of Appeal. Svartholm, also known as Anakata online, did not appear at the appeal trial last year because he was hospitalized in Cambodia and later went missing. The Court of Appeal has now decided to finalize the initial verdict of one year jail time and a fine of $1.1 million.
The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm deepened today. After failing to turn up for 2010′s hearing to appeal his 2009 conviction for criminal copyright infringement, the court decided he would be dealt with at a later date. Today, however, Svartholm failed to appear at the Court of Appeal.
At the end of September 2010 three of the four defendants in the Pirate Bay case arrived at the Court of Appeal in Stockholm. The fourth defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm, was nowhere to be seen. The appeal continued without him, with his hearing and sentencing to be conducted at a later date. Now Swedish media are reporting that the Court cannot set a date for Gottfrid’s hearing because he has disappeared.
In October the Stockholm District Court banned two of The Pirate Bay’s founders from operating the site. If they continue to work on The Pirate Bay, both will have to pay fines of $71,000. The two founders immediately decided to challenge the verdict and the Appeal Court has now announced that it will grant the appeal.
Tim Kuik, head of Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, had a brief encounter with Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata) on Friday. The two met at Hacking at Random, an outdoor hacker conference that currently takes place in The Netherlands, where Kuik took part in one of the panel discussions.
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