PIRATE
BOOTY
ter how much they eventually change
intellectual property laws, it will be too
slow for the founders of The Pirate Bay.
Although they finally lost an appeal
of their case in Sweden’s highest courts
earlier this year, the founders had already fled the country. Authorities also
haven’t been able to collect the fines
levied against the founders, according
to Shapiro.
Meanwhile, Nilsson says he is working
with the other defense lawyers to try to
bring a case against the nation of Sweden to the European Union’s Court of
Human Rights.
“In the European Convention for Human Rights, there are certain rules, and
certain articles, about the right to take,
“THIS IS NOT A
WAR THEY’RE
GOING TO
WIN THROUGH
LEGAL
BATTLES.”
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
give and spread information,” Nilsson
says. “It’s a very important rule.”
Still, it won’t become clear until the
end of this year, at the earliest, whether
the Court will agree to hear the case.
TPB remains fully operational. Its
servers were moved out of Sweden, and
are now presumed to be located in the
Netherlands and Russia, outside the
purview of Swedish law enforcement
agents, according to Robinson, the
MPAA’s head of antipiracy activities.
And the TPB trials, with all of their attendant publicity, simply served to raise
the site’s profile internationally.
“When they first raided The Pirate
Bay in 2006, it was pretty small. There
were maybe 200,000 or 300,000 users,” says TorrentFreak’s Van Der Sar.
“Today, there are about 5 million unique
visitors a day.”
That, as much as anything, i \