The Internet sure loves its outlaws
Despite the MPAA and the Swedish police, the Pirate Bay’s file-sharing ways are popular.
By David Sarno, LA Times Staff Writer
THEY may not wield battle-axes or wear horned helmets like their Viking forebears, but today’s Swedish pirates are still wreaking some pretty heavy-duty havoc.
The Pirate Bay file-sharing collective, one of the world’s largest facilitators of illegal downloading, is only the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright — or pro-piracy — movement that is striking terror in the heart of an industry that seems ever less capable of stopping it.
When the Pirate Bay’s Stockholm headquarters were raided last May and their servers seized, the Motion Picture Assn. of America thought it had scored a major victory. “Swedish Authorities Sink Pirate Bay,” trumpeted its news release. (As has since been pointed out, this is a mixed metaphor.) But the rejoicing didn’t last long. The site was back online three days later, and worse yet for Hollywood, the raid and several mass protests afterward generated so much sympathy for the pro-file sharing cause that both candidates for prime minister announced publicly that they did not think young file-sharers should be treated as criminals.
Sweden’s state-registered Pirate Party also benefited from the raid’s fallout. Its membership has now grown to almost 9,000, closing in on the nation’s Green Party (9,550), which holds 19 seats in Parliament.
