Swedes file charges against Pirate Bay four

Swedish prosecutor Håkan Roswall today filed charges against four people
for involvement in running The
Pirate Bay, one of the most widely used BitTorrent
trackers for illegally distributed music, movies and software in the world.

According to the charges, revenue made from advertising on the Web site totals
at least 1.2 million Swedish krona, equivalent to approximately US$190,000.
The prosecutor is calling for the Pirate Bay four to forfeit that sum to Swedish
authorities.

Along with the charges, Håkan Roswall submitted a number of invoices
connected to ad revenue, in order to prove commercial interests in distributing
copyright infringing material.

Peter Sunde, spokesperson for The Pirate Bay and one of the four being charged,
claims the calculations submitted Thursday are based on invoices not related
to the controversial Web site, but was not able to present figures when asked.

"Obviously it's uncomfortable to be prosecuted," Sunde said. "But
no one of the involved has intentionally done anything illegal."

Three of the people included in the indictment are directly connected to the
running of the site and have openly said so in the media. The fourth person
is a former CEO of operator Rix Port80, at the time of his tenure known as Rix
Telecom, accused of supplying hardware and bandwidth to The Pirate Bay.

While the validity of the charges must be verified in court in Stockholm, Henrik
Pontén, legal council of the Swedish Anti-piracy Bureau, regards them
as an indicator that online piracy has become about more than free content.

"We see a clear trend towards piracy becoming even more commercial,"
Pontén said. "While some want to ignore it, the preliminary investigation
shows that an affluent CEO of an ISP has made money that should have been earned
by the creators."

The prosecutor claims the four worked together to administer, host and develop
the Web site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law.

In total, 34 cases of copyright infringements are listed, of which 21 are related
to music files, nine to movies and four to games.