One of the founders of notorious file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has been ordered to pay a fine worth nearly US$400,000 to several major record labels after their content was shared illegally via the platform.

The penalty has been imposed on The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde by a court in Helsinki, Finland.

Interestingly, Sunde, who already left the notorious file sharing site in 2009, said on Twitter that he lost the court case he did not even know about.

The court case was brought by the Finnish divisions of Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI, accusing the Pirate Bay of illegally sharing the music of 60 of their artists through its service.

The artists mentioned in the brief included "Juha Tapio, Teräsniska, Chisu, Deniece Williams, Suvi Vesa-Matti Loiri, Michael Monroe, Anna Abreau, Antti Tuisku, and Children of Bodom," according to the local outlet Digitoday.

However, the recording division did not accuse Sunde of direct infringement; rather it accused Sunde of his involvement in the Pirate Bay that indirectly made him responsible for infringements.



The Helsinki District Court ordered the 37-year-old to pay $395,000 (350,000 Euros) to the record labels.

"The record companies know that I have not had any part of TPB for ages, still suing," Sunde wrote. "Bullying is the new black."

Sunde did not appear in the court to defend himself, so the Finnish Court handed down a default judgment.

Sunde is now ordered to pay the full amount and costs of nearly $62,000 (55,000 Euros) to the local branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Besides, the judge also threatened a fine of 1 Million Euros if the pirated content continues to be shared through The Pirate Bay website, though it is still not clear that how Sunde is supposed to do anything about the sharing of content on the site since he has no association with the service.

As TorrentFreak notes, Sunde and other co-founders of the Pirate Bay, including Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, also owes large sums of money to other copyright holders as a result of various court judgments over the years.

However, so far, none of those penalties have been "satisfied," and it is likely that this penalty will also go unpaid.

Last month, it was reported that the European Commission is planning to impose a record antitrust fine of about 3 BILLION euros (US$3.4 Billion) on Google for violating antitrust laws.

Not just Europe, Google also lost an anti-monopoly appeal in Russia two months back against ruling for violating its dominant position with the help of its Android mobile OS by forcing its own apps and services like Google Map, Youtube, and others, on users — reducing competition.

Now to put an end to the monopoly of major mobile Operating System, Russians are developing their own mobile operating system to compete with Android, iOS, and Windows mobile OS.

The Minister of Russian Communication Ministry, Nikolai Nikiforov tweeted last month about the initiative to develop a new Russian mobile operating system, for which the Russian company Open Mobile Platform (Открытая Мобильная Платформа) is hiring developers, testers and security engineers.

Open Mobile Platform is developing a Linux-based mobile operating system for big business and privacy seekers who are looking for "trusted" mobile solutions.

The new mobile operating system will be developed on the top of Sailfish OS, a product developed by the Finnish company Jolla formed by former Nokia engineers, which is now registered in Hong Kong.

According to Nikiforov, the Russian Federation agreed with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China And South Africa) countries to join efforts to Sailfish OS development in response to the total domination of US software, i.e. Microsoft Windows, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS that fully control most of the world’s IT-market.

The new Russian mobile operating system will be targeted at the mass audience, and smartphones based on the new OS will be inexpensive, OMP President Grigory Berezkin said in an interview with Vedomosti, a Moscow business newspaper.

Meanwhile, Russia is also working on the development of its own version of Tizen operating system that can be used on smartphones, tablets, laptops as well as the Internet of things (IoT) devices.

For this, Nikiforov revealed that the Russian Federation wants to hire homegrown developers to migrate popular apps from Android and iOS mobile platforms to Tizen as well as Sailfish OS. He also suggests Tizen devices will be launched widely in Russia soon.

Russia is not alone, who is developing its own operating system. China has also developed a Desktop Operating System named NeoKylin (and ‘Kylin’ in Chinese), which is already running on more than 40-50 percent of commercial units sold in the country by Dell.

The man who runs the biggest social network and continuously implements new security measures to boost its billion users security, himself failed to follow basics of Internet security for his own online accounts.

Yes, I’m talking about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had his Twitter and Pinterest accounts compromised on Sunday.

The hacker group from Saudi Arabia, dubbed OurMine, claimed responsibility for the hack and guess how the group did it?

Thanks to the LinkedIn data breach!

The hackers tweeted that they found Zuck's account credentials in the recent LinkedIn data breach, from which they took his SHA1-hashed password string and then broke it and tried on several social media accounts.

The group, which has more than 40,000 Twitter followers, then successfully broke into Zuck's Twitter (@finkd) and Pinterest profile and defaced its banners with its logo as well as tweeted out some offensive posts.

Mr. Zuckerberg has not sent a tweet from the account since 2012.

Now, what’s more surprising?

Zuckerberg's LinkedIn password was "dadada", which he also used for his other online accounts, the group tweeted.

So, this might be another alarm for those who haven’t yet changed passwords for their LinkedIn as well as other online accounts that used the same credentials.

In tweets now deleted, the group also claimed to have gained accessed to Zuck’s Instagram account, but Facebook confirmed that the group did not access his Instagram account.

"No Facebook systems or accounts were accessed," a Facebook spokesperson said. "The affected accounts have been re-secured."

More than 167 Million members' email and password combinations were hacked during a 2012 LinkedIn data breach and had just been posted online. The passwords were encrypted with the SHA1 algorithm with "no salt" that made it easier for hackers to crack them.

Like other data breaches, I suggest you change your password immediately, especially if you use the same password for other websites.