Huffington Magazine Issue 5 | Page 79

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 \