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Well shiver me Justin Timberlakes

Those Pirate Bay boys and their file sharing behemoth certainly took a major broadside this week, each receiving a years worth of reflection time at the pleasure of Queen Silvia of Sweden, plus a multi-million dollar fine to boot. The ignominy suffered by the four self-styled copyright freedom fighters, who displayed a less than reverential attitude towards the music establishment and the concept internet piracy throughout the trial, seems to have split public opinion pretty much down the middle.

The music industry and especially the IFPI, which took the action against Pirate Bay, are of course delighted. Mark Mulligan, a digital music analyst and vice-president of research at Forrester Research, believes the result was a boost for the entertainment business - but that its effect would be temporary at best. Some artists too were pleased, none other than Sir Paul McCartney labelling the verdict as ‘fair’. Jules De Martino from The Ting Tings sharing Macca’s feelings told the BBC - "You should value art, even if it's a penny. Art has to have a bit of value, whatever that cost is."

Others in the media are less damning, even Twitterphile Stephen Fry gets in on the act, ‘Shouting 'thief' all the time is no help. I stole in cassette age,’ he says.

The defence offered by Pirate Bay lawyers has also drawn attention to the nature of other search technologies. In fact they’ve made Google a target of their defence, drawing comparisons between the Pirate Bay technology and Google in that neither host pirated files, but rather track the location of copyrighted files and provide links to chunks of material known as torrents hosted elsewhere on the internet. If Google does not directly infringe copyright then why should Pirate Bay, they argue? A not wholly unreasonable point perhaps.

With the four planning to lodge appeals this saga looks set to run and run.