A draft law in Sweden envisions much tougher penalties for serious copyright infringement. Under current rules, sentences carry fines and/or prison terms up to a maximum of two years. Under the new proposals, serious copyright-related crimes would be treated more harshly, with prison sentences starting at six months and going all the way to a maximum of six years.
For more than a decade, rightsholders and anti-piracy groups in Sweden have criticized the scale of the penalties available for courts to hand down in cases of serious copyright infringement. Perhaps the most famous case, involving the people behind The Pirate Bay, ended with defendants Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström originally receiving eight, ten and four months in prison. As things stand the absolute maximum sentence is two years. The government now wants to challenge the status quo with changes to the law that will see the most egregious infringers jailed for much longer.