Two of The Pirate Bay's co-founders found guilty of copyright infringement, ordered to pay $477,000

Two of the three founders of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty by a Finnish court on charges of infringing copyright.  They are now liable to pay $477,000 in compensation to record labels. [caption id=“attachment_1026715” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Pirate Bay logo[/caption] According to TorrentFreak, the two co-founders, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, were absent in the trial, which amounted to being guilty, according to the court. In 2011, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry, also known as the IFPI, and Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center, an anti-piracy Copyright group, had filed a lawsuit against The Pirate Bay in the Helsinki District Group. IFPI, an organization which claims to protect the interests of close to 1,300 record companies globally, had filed the lawsuit and had asked for compensation accordingly, for the damages caused to their website. After six years of waiting, the verdict was given in favour of the IPFI. When the Court tried contacting the defendants, none replied in the stipulated time frame offered by the court. Thus they were declared guilty. Moreover, the two co-founders were ordered to ‘cease and desist’ their illegal operations. Last year, the same court had handed over the same judgment to The Pirate Bay’s other co-founder, Peter Sunde. A lawsuit was filed against him as he had illegally shared the music of 60 artists on The Pirate Bay. Copyright infringement **has been a thorn in the side** of the entertainment industry for decades now. In the internet era, search engines like Google do, involuntarily, enable copyright infringement. Google and other search engines have been asked, and   sometimes ordered, to remove infringing content. Governments too have pitched in.  In India, for example, piracy websites like The Pirate Bay keep getting taken down.