At the end of May, the Swedish Police raided the location where the PirateBay.org website was located and shut down the site seizing several servers. However, after less than 1 month, the site, which is considered the world's biggest BitTorrent tracker being visited by 10 million to 15 million daily users, resumes its activity from Sweden.
The Motion Picture Association of America quickly reacted after the Police raid considering that: "The actions today taken in Sweden serve as a reminder to pirates all over the world that there are no safe harbours for Internet copyright thieves."
After just a couple of days from the raid, PirateBay.org was back online, hosted somewhere in Netherlands. The operators of the website fought back considering that their actions were not illegal as The Pirate Bay only provided links and not the actual downloads.
A recently formed party called the Pirate Party that is supporting more open and consumer friendly copyright laws has been very active in criticizing the police actions. The Pirate Party that will run in the 2006 elections has supported public meetings in Stockholm and Goteborg where some hundreds of protestors with pirate flags asked for the return of the servers to the Pirate Bay owners and the closing of the investigation. It is estimated that in Sweden there are one million file-sharers out of the nine million inhabitants.
There have been rumours that the action has been required by the United States. According to Washington Post, in April 2006, officials from the US Government met with the officials from the Swedish Ministry of Justice and said that the Pirate Bay was one of the world's largest sources of pirated films and music. At the end of May, the police acted against PirateBay, even though, according to some sources, the Swedish prosecutors considered they didn't have a strong case against it.
The Police has also other problems since ten Swedish companies are now asking for damages for disruption of their businesses. During the raid on the PirateBay website the Police confiscated 200 servers, some of them owned by companies not affiliated with that website. The companies now request damages from 1 000 EUR up to 20 000 EUR.
At the middle of June, the website was back home with an increased popularity in Sweden but also worldwide. However, its operators considers splitting the operations between several countries in order to avoid closing it down.
Swedish police scupper Piratebay (31.05.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/31/piratebay_raid/
File-sharing crackdown and backlash in Sweden (4.06.2006)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/04/business/pirate.php
Pirate Bay resurfaces, while protesters walk the street (5.06.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/05/pirate_bay_reemerges/
Swedish IT companies demand damages after file-sharing crackdown
(15.06.2006)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/14826812...
Piratebay sails back to Sweden (15.06.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/piratebay_back_sweden/
US government pressured Sweden over Pirate Bay (19.06.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/19/us_pushes_sweden/