ON May 31, the Swedish police raided the headquarters of a major file-sharing Web site and hauled off hundreds of computer servers along with two men, in handcuffs, they suspected of being movie pirates.
The raid was an evidence-gathering exercise, and no charges have yet been filed, but Sweden, it seems, has finally become serious about cracking down on digital piracy after years of complacency. Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, crowed that the raid showed that “there are no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves.”
But just a month later, Quinn Norton, a reporter, sat in a living room in Malmo, Sweden, with the same men who were detained, and a third who was not, as they laughed and watched an illicit copy of the movie “Spanglish.”
Pirate Bay — the most notorious, most hunted digital-piracy outfit in the world — was back. Ms. Norton tells their story in a two-part series for Wired News (wired.com).
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