Last year, Swedish prosecutors filed criminal charges against four men they say violate the country’s copyright law by operating the Pirate Bay. The file-sharing site has long been one of the top Web destinations for people seeking access to pirated movies, games, books and business software. The site, which says it has 22 million users, is based in Sweden, where the government has taken few steps to curtail piracy until recently.
The four men—Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom—have denied the charges, arguing that they merely provided an index of content and didn’t control what other people did with it.
Arguments have finished, and a ruling is due Friday.
The men face up to two years in jail, although the prosecution has asked for sentences of one year. Entertainment companies, including Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros., EMI Group Ltd. and Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures, are also seeking a total of 117 million Swedish kronor ($14.2 million) compensation for lost revenue.
The case represents the culmination of U.S. attempts to get Sweden to take intellectual-property theft more seriously. Peer-to-peer file sharing has long been popular in Sweden. Most homes have broadband access and many people don’t see anything wrong with downloading entertainment without paying—in 2007, 43% of the peo- ple participating in a survey by Sweden’s biggest phone company said they planned to download music during the year. A Swedish political party is dedicated to legalizing peerto-peer file sharing, the main method for distributing pirated material.
Lately, however, and under heavy pressure from the U.S., the Swedish government has taken a tougher stance. This month, a law came into effect allowing content companies to obtain from Internet service providers the names and addresses of people suspected of sharing pirated files, a common practice in the European Union. On the day the law took effect, total Internet usage fell 40% in Sweden and has stayed down, according to Netnod Internet Exchange, an organization that measures Internet traffic.
The Pirate Bay trial, held over three weeks in February and March, became a publicrelations duel between the defendants and the entertainment industry.
The Pirate Bay has developed an international following in part because of its brazen attitude. It posts legal threats made against it for copyright violations on the site along with cheeky replies, lists its most-popular downloads and sells the Pirate Bay T-shirts by mail order. At the start of the trial, Pirate Bay supporters parked buses near the courthouse in downtown Stockholm where they held a press conference. The site’s founders say they believe in promoting free information.
The criminal trial had some Swedish quirks: only one of four judges had legal training and the defendants’ legal costs are being covered by the government. One day, both sides ended up in the same restaurant for lunch and traded awkward small talk.
Supporters posted daily accounts of the trial on the Web.
One of the defendants posted a note to hackers attacking the Web site of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the trade group for the music industry. “Whomever is hacking the IFPI websites, please stop doing that,” Mr.
Sunde wrote on Twitter. “It only makes us look bad!” The defense had an early victory when the prosecution dropped charges of being accessories to the production of copyrighted material, leaving them accused of “assisting in making available” copyrighted material.
Meanwhile, the head of the IFPI, John Kennedy, testified in the trial that the Pirate Bay had become “the No. 1 source of illegal music,” following successful court actions four years ago against peer-to-peer file-sharing sites Grokster in the U.S. and Kazaa in Australia.
Lawyers for the entertain ment companies said the site makes $1 million a year through advertising. The defense lawyers said the actual amount of revenue is a tiny fraction of that.
Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay Web site has continued to operate, and has done continuously since it was founded in 2003—except for a few days in May 2006, after Swedish police raided its offices on copyright-infringement charges and seized much of its equipment.
While the men appear to have a lot of public support in Sweden, legal experts expect them to lose. “I’ll be surprised if they are not convicted,” said Karl Olsson, a lawyer not involved in the case who works at Sweden’s biggest intellectual property law firm, Awapatent AB. “It is easy when you look at the Web site to see they are enabling people to download” pirated files.
It is unclear if outlawing the Pirate Bay will do much to reduce Internet piracy. In the past, downloaders have simply switched to different sites when the most popular content-sharing site is closed.
Nonetheless, the Pirate Bay has built up such a high profile that the entertainment industry will be able to claim a major victory against Internet piracy if it is shut down.
If the men are found not guilty, Sweden will likely have to change its copyright law to make file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay illegal to bring the country into line with international agreements protecting the integrity of intellectual property, Mr. Olsson said.
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