In another blow to online file-sharing, a Swedish appeals court upheld on Friday the copyright convictions of three of the four founders of The Pirate Bay–perhaps the world’s most well-known and notorious file-sharing Web site.

The court agreed with last year’s ruling, which found Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom guilty of helping Pirate Bay users break Sweden’s copyright law. However, it revised the ruling to decrease the defendants’ jail sentences and increase the amount they must pay in damages.

The lower court had sentenced the men to a year in prison and set damages at about 30 million Swedish kronor ($4.2 million). The new ruling raises the damages another 16 million kronor and cuts Neij’s sentence to 10 months, Sunde’s to 8 months, and Lundstrom’s to 4 months, based on each man’s individual activities with The Pirate Bay.

A fourth Pirate Bay founder convicted by the lower court, Gottfrid Swartholm Warg, will get a separate ruling later, owing to the fact that illness prevented him from participating in the appeals trial.

Still up and running, The Pirate Bay is a BitTorrent search engine that helps online file sharers locate pirated copies of films, music, games, software, and other digital content. It’s been celebrated by some as a heroic kick in the eye to corporate copyright owners who, these people believe, have priced content unfairly and whose policies have hampered the creative commons.

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