Sweden prosecutes its first P2P pirate

The Swedish court of appeals has upheld the conviction of a file sharer accused of infringing intellectual property rights.

Jimmy Sjostrom, 45, is the country's first file sharer to be convicted since P2P was made illegal in the country in 2005.

Sjostrom was fined 20,000 Swedish Krona (£1,400) in October 2006 by a lower court for sharing four music files over the internet.

The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has declared the upholding of the conviction a huge success. 

"The verdict only concerns four songs and it cost Sjostrom about £1,400," said the IFPI in a statement. "Illegal file-sharing is thus expensive when there are legal and cheap alternatives available over the internet today."

However, one of the country's political parties has also declared the result as a victory.

The Pirate Party said that it wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. 

According to the Pirate Party the fine-only conviction means that Swedish police will have a harder time tracking down further file sharers as police are only allowed to access internet records for crimes that carry jail sentences.

"The verdict confirms that the penalty for file-sharing in Sweden today is a fine," it said in a statement.

"For trifling crimes such as file-sharing, they are instead obligated to uphold their customer's right to anonymity."

The IFPI hopes that the upholding of the conviction and the substantial fine will deter other pirates in the country from illegally sharing files.