Four people who ran one of the world's top websites for illegal downloading are set to go on trial, in the latest battle pitting the entertainment industry against advocates of file sharing.
The four who run The Pirate Bay — Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem — are accused of "promoting violations by other people of laws protecting royalties," since the peer-to-peer files do not pass directly via the site.
Representatives of the movie, music and video games industry are also asking for nearly $17.6 million in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the company.
"It's not a political trial, it's not the trial that has as its purpose to shut down some kind of people's library or to prohibit any file-sharing technique," said Monique Wadsted, a lawyer for US movie makers and computer games producers.
"It's a trial that regards four persons that have conducted the commercial activity, earning a lot of money in providing the possibility for others to make pirate copies of big commercial productions, movies, music and popular computer games," she said.
If found guilty, the four defendants each face sentences up to two years in jail and heavy fines.
Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay provides instructions on how to skirt copyright fees and share music, film and computer game files using links offered on the site.
It claims nearly 22 million users around the world, with about a million accessing the site daily.
Swedish police have raided the company's offices several times and seized nearly 200 servers in 2006, temporarily shuttering the site. But it resurfaced a few days later with servers spread among different countries.
"Pirate Bay is no longer present in Sweden," Sunde, the site's spokesman, told TT news agency, arguing the site is a money losing operation.
Even if it is closed altogether, others would emerge to fill the gap, he said.
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