Four internet file-sharers are to be jailed for breaking copyright law in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were linked to The Pirate Bay, the world's biggest free file-sharing website.

The verdict is being seen as a step toward helping music and film companies recoup millions of dollars in revenues lost through illegal downloads.

The Pirate Bay was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

A court statement read: "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison."

The prosecution had said that by financing, programming and administering the site, the four men promoted the infringement of property rights by the site's users.

An industry specialist said that, despite the verdict, he did not think the case would have a lasting effect.

Music analyst Mark Mulligan of research firm Forrester, said: "Every time you get rid of one, another bigger one pops up. Napster went, and then up came a whole host of others. The problem of file-sharing just keeps growing year on year, and it's increasingly difficult for the industry to do anything about it."

Companies including Warner Bros, MGM, Columbia Pictures, 20th Century Fox Films, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI were also asking for damages of more than 100 million krona (£8 million) to cover lost revenues.

The court sentenced the defendants to pay just over 30 million krona (£2.4 million).

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