April 17, 2009 11:57

Pirate Bay founder: 'I'd rather burn my stuff than pay fine'

Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi refuses to pay up the £2.4million

One of the founders of The Pirate Bay website, who has been sentenced to a year in jail and fined £2.4million for copyright infringement, has said that he would rather "burn everything I own" than pay up.

Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, along with three others involved in the website, were given their verdicts in Stockholm yesterday (April 16).

Speaking in a web broadcast at Thepiratebay.org, he said that he and the other three convicted men would not pay the fine, and compared the legal fiasco to the film 'The Karate Kid'.

In the video he held up an I.O.U. for the money, saying, "I think that's the closest they're going to get to any money from us. Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the final dust from the burning. Not even the ashes."

Creating an analogy for the case against the various major record labels, he said, "This is like 'The Karate Kid'. In the beginning there are the bullies who are bullying Daniel San. Then he gets beaten up. That's where we're at right now. At the end we're going to have this epic win. In the end we're going to kick their ass."

He also said that the ruling would set a precedent for other websites. "It's going to set a standard for companies like YouTube," he said. "The difference for YouTube is that they actually have the content on their hard drive, whereas we only link to material."

Before the trial began the four accused said they would appeal should they receive a guilty verdict.

Blog - were the Pirate Bay founders lying about their motives all along?