The raid was carried out on 31st May on several web hosting
premises. It was intended to take offline and confiscate web
equipment belonging to Piratebay.org.
The not-for-profit Centrum för rättvisa (Centre for Justice)
claims that the police took 200 servers from hosting company PRQ,
including many belonging to companies not connected to Piratebay.
It will seek damages on their behalf from the Chancellor of Justice
ranging from $1,400 to $27,000 on behalf of 10 companies.
"These are small IT companies with one or a few employees," a
lawyer for the Centrum, Clarence Crafoord, told Sweden's Expressen
newspaper. "Being shut down for a week could mean bankruptcy for
them." Nobody at the Centrum was available for comment at time of
going to press.
It is the second potential damages claim arising from the raid.
OUT-LAW reported that the operators of Piratebay.org themselves
will seek compensation if they can prove that the site is not
illegal. In a statement at the time they said they "can receive
compensation from the Swedish state [if] the upcoming legal
processes show that [Piratebay] is indeed legal."
The site operators claim that it is legal because it only posts
links to material. Though Swedish copyright law is less strict than
in other countries, that argument is unlikely to work, Swedish
lawyers have warned.
It has also emerged that the US put pressure on the Swedish
Ministry of Justice to raid the site. The Washington Post reports
that officials from the US Department of Commerce, the State
Department and the US trade representative's office met with
officials from the Swedish Ministry of Justice just weeks before
the raid. They told the Swedes that Pirate Bay was one of the
world's largest sources of unauthorised music and films, the Post
reported.
