The Pirate Bay raid
Encyclopedia
The Pirate Bay raid took place on 31 May 2006 in Stockholm
, when The Pirate Bay
, a Swedish website
that indexes
torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled; the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the media coverage. The raid, alleged by Pirate Bay to be politically motivated and under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA), was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath, but with the website being restored within days and the raising of the debate in Swedish culture, The Pirate Bay and other commentators considered the raid "highly unsuccessful". On 31 January 2008, Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four of the individuals behind The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".
. Some 65 police officers participated in the raid, shutting down the website and confiscating its servers, as well as all other servers hosted by The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider
, PRQ
. The company is owned by two operators of The Pirate Bay. Three people—Gottfrid Svartholm
, Mikael Viborg, and Fredrik Neij
—were held by the police for questioning, but were released later in the evening. Mikael Viborg, the legal advisor to The Pirate Bay, was arrested at his apartment, brought in for questioning, forced to submit a DNA
sample and had his electronic equipment seized.
All servers in the server room were seized, including those running the website of Piratbyrån
, an independent organization fighting for file sharing rights, as well as servers unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other file sharing activities, including a Russian opposition news agency. In addition, equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and faxes were also seized. The Danish documentary Good Copy Bad Copy
(2007) includes closed-circuit television
camera footage of the raid, and interviews with Gottfrid Svartholm
and Fredrik Neij
about the raid and its aftermath.
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The Swedish public broadcast network
, Sveriges Television
, cited unnamed sources claiming that the raid was prompted by political pressure from the United States
, which the Swedish government denied. Sveriges Television claimed that the Swedish government was threatened by the World Trade Organization
with trade sanctions unless action was taken against The Pirate Bay.
There have been claims of politicians pressuring other government agencies to take action in connection with this allegation, which is unconstitutional in Sweden. A letter titled "Re: The Pirate Bay" from the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) to Dan Eliasson, State Secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Justice
, was dated two months before the raid and hinted at trade reprisals ("It is certainly not in Sweden's best interests to earn a reputation as a place where utter lawlessness is tolerated") and urged him to "exercise your influence to urge law enforcement officers in Sweden to take much needed action against The Pirate Bay".
The MPAA wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal website down." MPAA CEO Dan Glickman
also stated, "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet." The MPAA press release set forth its justification for the raid and claimed that there were three arrests; however, the individuals were not actually arrested, only held for questioning. The release also reprinted John G. Malcolm's allegation that The Pirate Bay was making money from the distribution of copyrighted material, a criticism denied by the Pirate Bay.
, as a prank
. Piratbyrån set up a temporary news blog
to inform the public about the incident.
On 1 June 2006, it was reported on The Pirate Bay website that it would be up and fully functional within a day or two. As promised, The Pirate Bay was back up and operational by the end of the next day, their logo now depicting the pirate ship firing cannon balls at the Hollywood sign. The header displayed the name "The Police Bay". The next logo featured the pirate ship as a stylized phoenix
, in reference to the servers rising up again after the raid.
The reincarnated website was, as stated by "Peter" in the Chaosradio International interview with Tim Pritlove, running on servers located in the Netherlands. As of 3 June, the search function was not available. It was possible to browse for .torrent files manually and download them, but attempts at downloading .torrent files for most copyrighted materials gave 404 Not Found errors. On 5 June 2006, The Pirate Bay went down, citing database server problems. It was back up the next day, but with limited availability. The Pirate Bay attributed these issues to increased traffic resulting from the recent publicity, and promised that the website would soon be running smoothly again. TPB thereafter fixed a number of minor software bugs and brought new servers online to handle the increased traffic load. By 9 June, the website was once again fully functional. On 14 June 2006, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
reported that The Pirate Bay was back in Sweden due to "pressure from the Department of Justice [in the Netherlands]."
During the afternoon of 1 June, again on 3 June, and again in the morning of 4 June, the website of the Swedish police
went down due to high load. It was speculated that this was a retaliatory denial-of-service attack
in response to the TPB raid. According to a Swedish article in the IT news website IDG
, the downtime resulted from many requests for a specific url—which had been widely circulated via IRC
chatrooms and internet forum
s. According to the article, the purpose was to "show what you think of the police's behaviour."
Demonstrations against the police action took place on 3 June 2006 in Gothenburg
and Stockholm
, organized by Piratbyrån and the Pirate Party in collaboration with the Liberal Youth, Young Greens and Young Left
parties. There were no reports of violence. Approximately 500–600 people showed up at the Stockholm protest and about 300 at the Gothenburg protest.
The Pirate Bay is considered part of an international anti-copyright
movement. The documentary Steal This Film
was produced and distributed (via BitTorrent) in the months following the raid. In the words of its speakers, it aimed to present the other side of the debate, until that time dominated by the media industry. The film was made available free, as donationware
.
Since the raid, Pirate Bay stated their disaster recovery plan
of "a few days" worked correctly, but that they are now moving to redundant servers both in Belgium
and Russia
, and an aim of a few hours restoration time, should the servers be disrupted again. Following the raid the number of Pirate Bay users grew from 1 million to 2.7 million. The number of peers grew almost 5 times, from 2.5 million to 12 million. It has been reported that the Pirate Bay claims more than 5 million active users. Internet traffic ranker Alexa.com ranks Pirate Bay as the 113th most popular website in the world.
told Ars Technica: "I'm quite sure we won't be convicted anyhow" and "[If we are], we'll just appeal all the way to the European Union court
. So in five years time this might be settled."
On 31 January 2008, Pirate Bay operators Fredrik Neij
, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde
and Carl Lundström were charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws." If convicted, the defendants face up to two years in prison and SEK
1.2 million in restitution. Pirate Bay's legal advisor, Mikael Viborg, has stated that because torrent files and trackers merely point to content, the site's activities are legal under Swedish law. Magnus Martensson, legal advisor for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
(IFPI), says the website is damaging to industry and liable for at least contributory copyright infringement.
profile, left the police force briefly to work for MPAA member studio Warner Brothers. Sydsvenskan
reported that Keyzer had already been working for the studio while the investigation into The Pirate Bay was still open. An April 2008 Pirate Party
press release called the potential conflict of interest a "bribing scandal". Piratbyrån
wrote about the allegations:
These matters have not been resolved in court and even though Keyzer was scheduled to be a witness in the Pirate Bay trial
, he was not called.
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, when The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
, a Swedish website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
that indexes
Index (search engine)
Search engine indexing collects, parses, and stores data to facilitate fast and accurate information retrieval. Index design incorporates interdisciplinary concepts from linguistics, cognitive psychology, mathematics, informatics, physics, and computer science...
torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled; the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the media coverage. The raid, alleged by Pirate Bay to be politically motivated and under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
(MPAA), was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath, but with the website being restored within days and the raising of the debate in Swedish culture, The Pirate Bay and other commentators considered the raid "highly unsuccessful". On 31 January 2008, Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four of the individuals behind The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".
Execution
At roughly 11:00 am UTC on 31 May 2006, a major raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place, prompted by allegations of copyright violations and formally ordered by judge Tomas Norström, who later presided on the 2009 trialThe Pirate Bay trial
The Pirate Bay trial is a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay...
. Some 65 police officers participated in the raid, shutting down the website and confiscating its servers, as well as all other servers hosted by The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
, PRQ
PRQ
PeRiQuito AB is a Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company created in 2004.-Ownership:Based in Stockholm, PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, two founders of The Pirate Bay.- Business model :...
. The company is owned by two operators of The Pirate Bay. Three people—Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid Svartholm
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde...
, Mikael Viborg, and Fredrik Neij
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....
—were held by the police for questioning, but were released later in the evening. Mikael Viborg, the legal advisor to The Pirate Bay, was arrested at his apartment, brought in for questioning, forced to submit a DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
sample and had his electronic equipment seized.
All servers in the server room were seized, including those running the website of Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån was a Swedish organization established to support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property — by freely sharing information and culture...
, an independent organization fighting for file sharing rights, as well as servers unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other file sharing activities, including a Russian opposition news agency. In addition, equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and faxes were also seized. The Danish documentary Good Copy Bad Copy
Good Copy Bad Copy
Good Copy Bad Copy, A documentary about the current state of copyright and culture, is a documentary about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke.It features...
(2007) includes closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
camera footage of the raid, and interviews with Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid Svartholm
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde...
and Fredrik Neij
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....
about the raid and its aftermath.
Political issues
Public broadcasting
Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing.Public broadcasting may be...
, Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
, cited unnamed sources claiming that the raid was prompted by political pressure from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, which the Swedish government denied. Sveriges Television claimed that the Swedish government was threatened by the World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...
with trade sanctions unless action was taken against The Pirate Bay.
There have been claims of politicians pressuring other government agencies to take action in connection with this allegation, which is unconstitutional in Sweden. A letter titled "Re: The Pirate Bay" from the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
(MPAA) to Dan Eliasson, State Secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Justice
Ministry of Justice (Sweden)
The Ministry of Justice is a Cabinet level ministry in the Government of Sweden with responsibility for legislation. The ministry is responsible for the Swedish legal system in Constitution and general administrative law, civil law, procedural law and criminal law...
, was dated two months before the raid and hinted at trade reprisals ("It is certainly not in Sweden's best interests to earn a reputation as a place where utter lawlessness is tolerated") and urged him to "exercise your influence to urge law enforcement officers in Sweden to take much needed action against The Pirate Bay".
The MPAA wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal website down." MPAA CEO Dan Glickman
Dan Glickman
Daniel Robert "Dan" Glickman is an American businessman and politician. He served as the United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001, prior to which he represented the Fourth Congressional District of Kansas as a Democrat in Congress for 18 years. He was Chairman and CEO of the...
also stated, "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet." The MPAA press release set forth its justification for the raid and claimed that there were three arrests; however, the individuals were not actually arrested, only held for questioning. The release also reprinted John G. Malcolm's allegation that The Pirate Bay was making money from the distribution of copyrighted material, a criticism denied by the Pirate Bay.
Aftermath
After the raid, The Pirate Bay displayed a "SITE DOWN" message confirming that Swedish police had executed search warrants for breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The BitTorrent community quickly spread the announcement across online news sites, blogs, and discussion forums. The closure message initially caused some confusion because on 1 April 2005 The Pirate Bay had posted a similar message, stating that they were permanently down due to a supposed raid by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPIIFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland...
, as a prank
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...
. Piratbyrån set up a temporary news blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
to inform the public about the incident.
Phoenix (mythology)
The phoenix or phenix is a mythical sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the Arabian, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Indian and Phoenicians....
, in reference to the servers rising up again after the raid.
The reincarnated website was, as stated by "Peter" in the Chaosradio International interview with Tim Pritlove, running on servers located in the Netherlands. As of 3 June, the search function was not available. It was possible to browse for .torrent files manually and download them, but attempts at downloading .torrent files for most copyrighted materials gave 404 Not Found errors. On 5 June 2006, The Pirate Bay went down, citing database server problems. It was back up the next day, but with limited availability. The Pirate Bay attributed these issues to increased traffic resulting from the recent publicity, and promised that the website would soon be running smoothly again. TPB thereafter fixed a number of minor software bugs and brought new servers online to handle the increased traffic load. By 9 June, the website was once again fully functional. On 14 June 2006, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet is a daily newspaper in Sweden. The first issue appeared on 18 December 1884. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as local coverage of the Greater Stockholm region...
reported that The Pirate Bay was back in Sweden due to "pressure from the Department of Justice [in the Netherlands]."
During the afternoon of 1 June, again on 3 June, and again in the morning of 4 June, the website of the Swedish police
Swedish Police Service
The Swedish Police Service is a collection of Government agencies concerned with police matters in Sweden. The Swedish Police Service consists of 28,500 employees of which 39 per cent are women. The staff consists of 20,000 police officers of which 25 per cent are women and 8,500 civilian staff of...
went down due to high load. It was speculated that this was a retaliatory denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
in response to the TPB raid. According to a Swedish article in the IT news website IDG
IDG
International Data Group is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization.IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was formed in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by Patrick Joseph McGovern and a friend, Fred Kirch...
, the downtime resulted from many requests for a specific url—which had been widely circulated via IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
chatrooms and internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
s. According to the article, the purpose was to "show what you think of the police's behaviour."
Demonstrations against the police action took place on 3 June 2006 in Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
and Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, organized by Piratbyrån and the Pirate Party in collaboration with the Liberal Youth, Young Greens and Young Left
Young Left (Sweden)
Young Left is the youth organization of the Swedish Left Party.-Ideology:It is an organization that organizes the youth of today to fight for socialist and feminist social change. Young Left is a youth organization developed out of the labour movement, with influences from environmentalism, the...
parties. There were no reports of violence. Approximately 500–600 people showed up at the Stockholm protest and about 300 at the Gothenburg protest.
Anti-copyright
Anti-copyright refers to the complete or partial opposition to prevalent copyright laws. Copyright is known as the owner's right for copies to be only made by the owner or with his/her authorization in form of a license....
movement. The documentary Steal This Film
Steal This Film
Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol....
was produced and distributed (via BitTorrent) in the months following the raid. In the words of its speakers, it aimed to present the other side of the debate, until that time dominated by the media industry. The film was made available free, as donationware
Donationware
Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational software to the user and pleads for an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary . The amount of the donation may also be stipulated by the author, or it may be left to the discretion of the user,...
.
Since the raid, Pirate Bay stated their disaster recovery plan
Disaster recovery
Disaster recovery is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. Disaster recovery is a subset of business continuity...
of "a few days" worked correctly, but that they are now moving to redundant servers both in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and an aim of a few hours restoration time, should the servers be disrupted again. Following the raid the number of Pirate Bay users grew from 1 million to 2.7 million. The number of peers grew almost 5 times, from 2.5 million to 12 million. It has been reported that the Pirate Bay claims more than 5 million active users. Internet traffic ranker Alexa.com ranks Pirate Bay as the 113th most popular website in the world.
Charges
In May 2007, prosecutor Håkan Roswall made it clear that he intended to press charges against the administrators of The Pirate Bay. In mid-January 2008 Peter SundePeter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is an IT expert with Norwegian and Finnish roots. He is best known for being a co-founder and the spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.-Personal life:...
told Ars Technica: "I'm quite sure we won't be convicted anyhow" and "[If we are], we'll just appeal all the way to the European Union court
Court of Justice of the European Union
The Court of Justice of the European Union is the institution of the European Union which encompasses the whole judiciary. Seated in Luxembourg, it has three sub-courts; the European Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal.The institution was originally established in...
. So in five years time this might be settled."
On 31 January 2008, Pirate Bay operators Fredrik Neij
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....
, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi is an IT expert with Norwegian and Finnish roots. He is best known for being a co-founder and the spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracker site.-Personal life:...
and Carl Lundström were charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws." If convicted, the defendants face up to two years in prison and SEK
Swedish krona
The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...
1.2 million in restitution. Pirate Bay's legal advisor, Mikael Viborg, has stated that because torrent files and trackers merely point to content, the site's activities are legal under Swedish law. Magnus Martensson, legal advisor for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
IFPI
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland...
(IFPI), says the website is damaging to industry and liable for at least contributory copyright infringement.
Allegations
Soon after the police investigation of The Pirate Bay finished in 2008, the lead investigator, Jim Keyzer, according to Keyzer's since-deleted FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
profile, left the police force briefly to work for MPAA member studio Warner Brothers. Sydsvenskan
Sydsvenskan
-External links:*...
reported that Keyzer had already been working for the studio while the investigation into The Pirate Bay was still open. An April 2008 Pirate Party
Pirate Party
The Pirate Party is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide, forming the international Pirate Party movement....
press release called the potential conflict of interest a "bribing scandal". Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån
Piratbyrån was a Swedish organization established to support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property — by freely sharing information and culture...
wrote about the allegations:
These matters have not been resolved in court and even though Keyzer was scheduled to be a witness in the Pirate Bay trial
The Pirate Bay trial
The Pirate Bay trial is a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay...
, he was not called.