Sweden to charge Pirate Bay in copyright case

By Anna Ringstrom

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.

Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.

Public prosecutor Hakan Roswall said last week he will charge the Swedish site's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison.

The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site.

No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers and no swapping of files actually takes place there. Rather, Pirate Bay locates file sharers on the Internet and acts as a directory of so-called torrent files.

BitTorrent is a protocol that enables big file transfers. The torrent files, downloadable from Pirate Bay, contain the information needed to download film or music files from others.

"It's not merely a search engine. It's an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available," Roswall told Reuters.