transcript

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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman. This is The World. There've been a lot of stories about pirates lately. But today's pirate story is a little different. Nothing to do with Somalia or the Indian Ocean -- or even ships. This story is out of Sweden -- and it's about electronic or online piracy. Four Swedish men who ran the hugely-successful file-sharing website "The Pirate Bay" were convicted of copyright infringement by a court in Stockholm. They were sentenced to a year in prison. They also have to pay 3.6 million dollars to media giants like Warner Brothers, M-G-M, and E-M-I. Their crime was creating an online space where people could share illegally downloaded content -- music, videos and films -- such as Pirates of the Caribbean.

BARBOSO: There was a time when a pirate was free to make his way in the world. But our time is coming to an end.

WERMAN: Well, Sweden's now-convicted online pirates aren't planning to go quietly, or pay up.

PETER SUNDE: I made a payment here; I have this I-O-U. Thirty-one million Swedish. Just kidding. I think that's as close as they are going to get to any money from us. Even if I had money, I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the ashes.

WERMAN: That's Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde. He held a news conference today -- via his home webcam, taking questions via twitter. Sunde got lots of supportive tweets. A lot of Swedes -- not to mention other people 'round the world -- support The Pirate Bay. In Sweden, there's even a new political party based on the single issue of reforming copyright law. It's called the Pirate Party and it's led by Rickard Valksvinge. Now, ThePirateBay website, Mr. Valksvinge is still up, do you think it will stay up?

RICKARD VALKSVINGE: I'm absolutely convinced it will stay up. There were four individuals on trial today. The pirate bay is plastic, silicon, and metal. And it's going to keep humming. It's gonna keep serving knowledge and culture to the world, and I think that's fantastic.

WERMAN: Now, pirate bay kind of functions like a search engine, you know, like the Napster of old, it leads you to sharers with content. Does this mean all search engines must now be careful?

VALKSVINGE: I think so. Essentially there's no difference in technical functionality from what the pirate bay does from what Google does, for instance. In fact, Google does more copyright infringement because it stores a copy on its own servers, something pirate bay doesn't.

WERMAN: Why is copyright reform such a big issue in Sweden? Why do you get so much support?

VALKSVINGE: I think it was because broadband rollout was a little bit ahead of the curve here. I had 10 megabit up and download to my apartment ten years ago and today 100 megabit is the norm for a household in Sweden. And once you get that kind of disruptive technology to the masses it changes the public's perception of how it can and should be used.

WERMAN: Who are you opposed to in this battle? Is it the artists who create the content or the entertainment like record labels and movie studios?

VALKSVINGE: We're opposed to the old industries that were the middle men that are no longer needed. They are essentially vying for their survival and they're trying to legislate their place in the market.

WERMAN: But in your anger with the industries you're also hurting artists. I mean, they create original work and you provide the means, or rather The Pirate Bay, for example, provides the means for people to steal it, essentially, isn't that right?

VALKSVINGE: Well, we encourage copying it. If you look at when libraries arrived 160 years ago people are arguing, or rather the publishers were arguing, that if people can go to libraries and read books for free, I mean, are you mad? Nobody would ever buy a book again in their life. People won't be able to live off of writing books. We won't have authors. We won't have any literature worth its name. Nobody will ever write a book again.

WERMAN: But, you know, it's a deeply, kind of, human motivation, too, to create art. And if those artists aren't getting paid then something's wrong, isn't that right?

VALKSVINGE: Well, once you want to get compensated you're no longer an artist, but an entrepreneur. And the same rules apply to you as any other entrepreneur on the planet. You need to find somebody willing to pay for what you provide.

WERMAN: Essentially what you're saying is that it's not just a reform of copyright laws; you're saying that what needs to happen is a complete sea change of the mindset among artists that you don't really need to get paid anymore.

VALKSVINGE: We're not saying you don't really need to get paid. What we are saying is that the internet changes things so fundamentally that there's no longer anybody in control of knowledge and culture. Nobody can prevent somebody else from copying what has already been published.

WERMAN: Well, certainly lots to talk about here. Rickard Valksvinge, head of Sweden's pirate party. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

VALKSVINGE: Thank you.

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