Four men jailed over file-sharing website

Four men in Sweden have been jailed for their part in the running of popular file-sharing website Pirate Bay.

The Stockholm district court sentenced Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom to one year each in prison today.

The four were also ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor (£2.4 million) to a number of entertainment companies including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

The Pirate Bay site is thought to be used as a file-sharing forum by around 22 million people who can freely download music, films and computer games.

The site was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years has been run individually.

Their site allows users to share information through so-called torrent files.