Prosecutor Plans to File Charges Against The Pirate Bay
Five people expected to be charged before Jan. 31, 2008.
By: Sherri L. Shaulis
Posted: 11/11/2007
STOCKHOLM, Sweden
- According to a published report on
TorrentFreak.com,
prosecutor Hakan Roswal announced this week that he plans to file
copyright-infringement charges against five people associated with
The Pirate Bay before Jan. 31, 2008.
Officials from The Pirate Bay, which bills itself as "the
world's largest torrent tracker," said they are confident that Roswal's plans will
not be successful. However, they said, they are ready to move to another
country if necessary.
The report states that only two people associated with The
Pirate Bay have been identified: co-founder Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom,
former CEO of Rix Telecom, which at one time provided bandwidth to the site.
According to TorrentFreak.com, The Pirate Bay officials
contend that they run a search engine and do not store any copyrighted material
on their servers. The site has come under fire from law-enforcement agencies
seeking to shut down its trading of copyrighted material, which is illegal in
several countries.
Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay's offices in May 2006,
taking the site offline for three days. The site returned after relocating to
the Netherlands.
The offices since have moved back to Sweden.
Earlier this week, The Pirate Bay announced plans to develop
its own software after BitTorrent Inc., whose technology the site currently
uses, announced that it was making deals with mainstream content providers.
The site typically has more than 1.5 million daily visitors.
