The Pirate Bay founder to take case to Europe’s top court

PanARMENIAN.Net - A founder of Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay will take his case to Europe's top court after the Supreme Court in Sweden refused to hear his appeal, his lawyer said Monday, May 14, AFP reported.

"We now see no other solution but to take this case on to the European Court of Justice," Jonas Nilsson, who represents Fredrik Neij, wrote in an opinion piece in Sweden's paper of reference Dagens Nyheter.

Neij was originally sentenced to a year in prison by a lower court, but an appeals court in late 2010 shortened his sentence to 10 months. The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and key financier Carl Lundstroem were sentenced to eight and four months respectively, and the trio was ordered to pay a total of 46 million kronor (5.1 million euros, $6.6 million) in damages for copyright infringement to the music and movie industry.

Founded in 2003, The Pirate Bay, which claims to have more than 35 million users, makes it possible to skirt copyright fees and share music, film and computer game files using bit torrent technology, or peer-to-peer links offered on the site.

Neij's lawyer Nilsson on Monday stressed that the site uses an automated process to spread files that are not under copyright protection and that his client and his colleagues' activities had been within the law.

Finding them guilty for the illegal activities of some of the site users, he said, was like prosecuting the postal service for delivering packages with illegal content.

Nilsson noted that under the European Convention of Human Rights, "Swedish citizens are guaranteed the freedom to receive and spread information."

"In our view, Fredrik Neij's right to freedom of expression is being denied," he wrote.

The lawyer was critical of the Swedish Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal in the case. "Only a few cases are suitable and can be considered of value (in setting a judicial precedent). The Pirate Bay case was such a case," he wrote.