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A series of documents released by the US Department of State have revealed how Sweden was pressed to take action against The Pirate Bay. According to US officials, this directly led to law enforcement's decision to shut down the torrent site more than ten years ago. Sweden, meanwhile, avoided a spot on the feared US Trade Representative's 301 Watch List.
[...] The trail starts with a cable sent from the US Embassy in Sweden to Washington in November 2005. This is roughly six months before the Pirate Bay raid, which eventually resulted in criminal convictions for four men connected to the site.
The Embassy writes that Hollywood's MPAA and the local Anti-Piracy Bureau (APB) met with US Ambassador Bivins and, separately, with Swedish State Secretary of Justice at the time, Dan Eliasson. The Pirate Bay issue was at the top of the agenda during these meetings.
"The MPA is particularly concerned about PirateBay, the world's largest Torrent file-sharing tracker. According to the MPA and based on Embassy's follow-up discussions, the Justice Ministry is very interested in a constructive dialogue with the US. on these concerns," the cable reads.
"Embassy understands that State and Commerce officials have also met with Swedish officials in Washington on the same concern," it adds, with the Embassy requesting further "guidance" from Washington.
Source : How The US Pushed Sweden to Take Down The Pirate Bay
[...]
Then the 'inevitable' happened. On May 31, 2006, The Pirate Bay was raided by 65 Swedish police officers. They entered a datacenter in Stockholm with instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay's servers and collect vital evidence.
A few weeks after the raid, the Embassy sent another cable to Washington informing the homefront on the apparent success of their efforts.
"Starting with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) visit to post last fall, Embassy Stockholm has engaged intensely with our Swedish interlocutors in efforts to improve IPR enforcement, in particular with regard to Internet piracy. The actions on May 31 thus mark a significant victory for our IPR efforts."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:16PM (1 child)
Had the media companies had more innovation, they would have realized if they made their own torrent site, one even bigger than The Pirate Bay, then the bay would no longer be the largest threat. They won't have to waste all that time and money playing wack-a-mole with it anymore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 19 2017, @11:00PM
1. It could recover less money than the whack-a-mole strategy
2. It could encourage people who wouldn't normally pirate to do so, lessening sales
3. It could be treated as a honeypot and ignored by the pirating community
4. There would be no way to get all media companies on board with a single "bay", see how Hulu [wikipedia.org] has operated (soon Disney will have its own streaming service)
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