How The Piratebay Raid Changed Sweden

A lot of things happened after the Swedish police attempted to take down The Piratebay. It’s time to recap and look ahead.

Torrentfreak asked Mathias from Piracy Unlimited (and Sweden) to give an overview of the things that happened, and the things that will happen.

First of all, the attack against the Pirate Bay was highly unsuccessful – they only stayed down for a couple of days before they were back in full force. Stronger than ever thanks to the widespread media attention. Subsequently several sources reported that the MPAA initiated the attack, by directly influencing Swedish authorities on governmental level, in this case the Ministry of Justice, to intervene in this specific case, which is considered illegal in Sweden (the term is “minister rule”). It also turned out that the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list because they didn’t take the Pirate Bay down, something that should’ve made the Swedish government move even quicker. What they did was that they hinted to the prosecutor in this case that the government ‘expected quick results’ in this matter. The prosecutor had written a PM a while back that it was impossible to convict the Pirate Bay, but after some letters from the MPAA and this not so subtle hint from, what I think was the Secretary of State, he changed his mind.

When Swedish television published documents that proved this, there was some intense outburst for a while in the media, and this only worked to give the piracy movement more sympathies. Their anthology, Copy me, sold out and a new edition will be released in a few days.

Related Posts

1. Sweden threatened with Trade Sanctions by the US over the Piratebay
2. “US government behind Pirate Bay raid”
3. New Law empowers Anti-piracy lobby in Sweden
4. The Pirate Bay Returns to Sweden
5. Day #1 of The Pirate Bay ‘Spectrial’ in Sweden