Record companies sue Pirate Bay four

Record companies are demanding that the four individuals responsible for operating the file sharing site The Pirate Bay pay €1.6 million (15 million kronor/$2.5 million) in compensatory damages. The indictment covers 24 music albums, nine films, and four computer games. The compensation claim was presented to Stockholm District Court on Monday. "The record companies can go screw themselves," said Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg to The Local. (The Local, Ars Technica)

Sweden to Get Tough on File-Sharers

Swedish courts will soon be able to force the country's Internet providers to hand out information on suspected file-sharers in a move to crackdown on online piracy, the culture and justice ministers said Friday. "We need to... stand up for musicians, authors, filmmakers and all other copyright owners so that they have the right to their own material," Justice Minister Beatrice Ask and Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth wrote in a joint opinion piece published in the Svenska Dagbladet daily. The ministers said they will move ahead with the proposal this spring. (AP)

The Pirate Bay Interrogations

When The Pirate Bay was raided back in 2006, three men were brought in for questioning, and the interrogations continued in the months that followed. The police’s goal was obviously to let the people behind the site confess to something they didn’t do. This led to a series of the most hilarious interrogation transcripts I’ve ever read. (Torrent Freak)

Pirate Bay hit with legal action

Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden. Prosecutor Hakan Roswall said the website was commercially exploiting copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising revenues. If convicted, the four men could face a maximum of two years in prison. (BBC News, Billboard)

Swedish Politicians Strike Blows at Copyright Lobby

Last week, seven Swedish MPs wrote to a prominent Swedish tabloid newspaper ‘Expressen’ to express their dissatisfaction with proposals for dealing with copyright infringers. Now, that number has increased to 13, and the issue seems to keep growing. Initially, Karl Sigfrid, and 6 other MPs [Members of Parliament] wrote to Expressen to express their opposition to a plan proposed by Cecilia Renfors, a copyright analyst appointed by the Swedish government. Her plan was that ISPs would close down the connections of filesharers, preventing them from participating in any further copyright infringement.  The condemnation for this was broad-based, from the Data inspection Board, the Competition Authority, all the way to the Swedish court of Appeal. (TorrentFreak)

Showdown Looms Over Pirated-Media Directory

Based on evidence collected in a 2006 raid on the offices of The Pirate Bay, Swedish prosecutors say that by the end of January they expect to charge the individuals who operate the file-sharing service with conspiracy to breach copyrights. The prosecutors' move comes after years of complaints from Hollywood executives and U.S. government officials. U.S. Embassy officials have described Sweden as home to the "worst Internet piracy in the world," and the Motion Picture Association of America has been fighting to shutter Pirate Bay's site for years. (Wall Street Journal)