By Mark Sutherland

LONDON (Billboard) – "It's been a busy week," deadpanned Jo Oliver, several days after a Swedish court sentenced four men behind the notorious BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay to a year in jail each, after they were found guilty of assisting in making copyrighted material available.

The sentence represented a key victory for the recording industry in its fight against piracy following recent setbacks, including the rejection or withdrawal of "three strikes"-type laws in France and New Zealand. It's a fight Oliver has been leading since becoming the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's general counsel in June 2008, after two years of heading the trade organization's litigation department.

A New Zealander who has retained her accent despite years working in London and New York, Oliver has been at the forefront of the IFPI's attempts to get Internet service providers (ISPs) to take responsibility for piracy on their networks, as well as pursuing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing sites in international courts. She says that the dual approach will continue, arguing that the Pirate Bay verdict will have a crucial "deterrent impact on others that would engage in this sort of activity."

Oliver was tight-lipped about which sites the IFPI is targeting next -- "We wouldn't want to announce our secret plan to Billboard," she quipped -- but talked happily about the Pirate Bay case and its implications.

Billboard: You obviously won the argument inside the courtroom, but in light of the pro-Pirate Bay protests in Sweden, do you feel you won it outside as well?

Jo Oliver: The individuals behind the Pirate Bay have certainly been able to paint themselves as Internet freedom fighters, and they have some public sympathy with a certain portion of, in particular, the Swedish population. But we certainly think that, throughout this trial, there has been less and less sympathy for that position because it's become clear that these guys were deliberately engaged in this operation. It wasn't something they were doing for fun on the side in their bedrooms. It was a commercial enterprise. They intended to facilitate copyright infringement, they intended to make money from it, and they did.

Billboard: What kind of precedent does it set?

Oliver: It will have a huge impact, particularly against BitTorrent sites and services. In cases like Grokster in the U.S., U.S. law doesn't apply everywhere, but that was a hugely influential decision (by the United States Supreme Court in 2005, which led to Grokster's closing of its site), and peer-to-peer services don't operate in the same way anymore because of that decision. I think the same will apply to BitTorrent services following the Pirate Bay decision.

Billboard: Given that previous shutdowns of sites like Napster and Kazaa have failed to make much impact on overall P2P traffic, why is the Pirate Bay victory so significant?

Oliver: I don't necessarily agree that other cases haven't had an impact. They've certainly changed the way people can operate on the Internet. We have market-by-market statistics and, in some cases, P2P has been contained against the growth of broadband penetration, so there's different ways of cutting the numbers. The Pirate Bay was an incredibly popular service that has a certain symbolic importance. In addition to that, it's a very important legal precedent.

Billboard: But Napster and Kazaa were important legal precedents as well and other sites sprang up to take their place. What's different this time?

Oliver: Parallel with the development of the legal cases against sites like the Pirate Bay, we've also seen a huge increase in the number of options available (to access digital music) legally, which certainly wasn't the case around the time of the Napster case. There weren't the myriad of options that there are available now, like Spotify or Nokia (Comes With Music). You can't have a legitimate market unless those who don't have a license are stopped.

Billboard: Will this ultimately just drive piracy to parts of the Internet where it's harder to find or to countries where it's harder to legislate against?

Oliver: There always is an element of driving certain types of behavior underground, but that's an indication of progress. Twenty-two million people (currently) using the Pirate Bay are no longer going to be using a service if it's underground, at an odd location and more difficult to access. Certainly, there are enforcement issues in some other countries, but there are always options available for action.

Billboard: How important was it that prison sentences were handed out in terms of the judgment acting as a deterrent?

Oliver: It makes it clear that it's a very big risk for anyone who's going to engage in that sort of activity. If I were (a Torrent site's) lawyer, I'd be saying, "Are you prepared to look at criminal conviction and jail time? If you are, then continue. But if not, think again." I don't know about you, but I'd find that a huge deterrent.

Billboard: Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde has claimed that what the site does isn't demonstrably different from what Google does. What's your view on that?

Oliver: What they do is dramatically different to Google. Their operation is deliberately set up to facilitate copyright infringement. If you were to search for Coldplay on Google, you'd get a wide variety of results including information about the band, news on upcoming tours and so on. On Pirate Bay, you'd just get a list of links to Coldplay albums. If Google links to infringing material, then they'll receive a notice from us to remove that, and they will respond. Pirate Bay makes fun of copyright owners when they're sent notices.

Billboard: The Pirate Bay still seems to be laughing -- the site's still running, and Sunde claims it won't ultimately pay any fine or go to jail. What happens next? 

Oliver: These individuals have taken a certain PR position from the start, so it's not surprising that they've kept that position. The convictions themselves don't mean that the service will shut down, but we've started that process already. There are certain legal steps, and every service needs an ISP, so we'll be looking to the ISPs to take some action. I'm confident the appeal court will uphold the convictions.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)