Several major entertainment industry companies including Columbia Pictures and Universal Music have updated the injunction against the founders of The Pirate Bay. The initial order prevented the founders from operating the BitTorrent site on pain of a 500,000 Swedish kronor fine, but it became unenforceable after The Pirate Bay removed its tracker.

The entertainment industries have tried long and hard to take The Pirate Bay offline in Sweden.

Aside from the main criminal trial, they also obtained a wide variety of interim injunctions through the courts.

In 2009, a Stockholm district court injunction ordered founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg to cease assisting in The Pirate Bay’s operations or face fines of 500,000 kronor ($78,000). Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde was later presented with a similar injunction.

Neij and Svartholm Warg were prohibited from assisting in the operation of The Pirate Bay website, and any website that hosts torrents available through The Pirate Bay, and The Pirate Bay tracker.

However, an interesting situation arose in the fall of 2009 when The Pirate Bay decided to remove their in-house tracker. As the setup of the site had changed the Appeal Court ruled that the interim injunction against the site’s founders was no longer valid. The Pirate Bay no longer consisted of all three elements, the Court ruled.

The movie studios and record labels were not pleased with this outcome and filed for a new interim injunction against Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in June 2010 and against the other founders, Neij and Swartholm Warg, in October last year.

The injunction against Sunde was made final in October last year after a decision by the Court of Appeal, and the injunction against Neij was made final in February this year. Swartholm Warg was unfindable. The new injunctions in force no longer prohibit the site’s founders from operating all three elements of the site, but any.

Last week the companies dropped the enforcement action under the old injunction to replace it with one that applies to the broader injunction. If this order is violated, Neij faces a fine of 500,000 kronor.

Whether or not the update was needed has to be questioned. The founders of The Pirate Bay have stated many times that they handed over the operation of the site and all its aspects to the Seychelles-based company Reservella.

During the past several years the entertainment companies initiated several civil cases in addition to the criminal trial, and by doing so managed to obtain several injunctions. Two of these prevented the site’s former ISPs Portlane and Black Internet to serve the site as a customer.

In the months that followed anti-piracy outfit IFPI threatened several ISPs around the world against daring to host The Pirate Bay, quoting the injunctions above. Needless to say, the paperwork was one of the most powerful tools they have to chase down The Pirate Bay and make the lives of those who operate it as difficult as possible. Eventually this forced The Pirate Bay to seek shelter with the local Pirate Party.

With the new and more broad injunction and the injunction against Portlane, the movie studios and record labels now have even more ammunition to go after companies who dare to provide services to The Pirate Bay. This means that the new mountain complex where the servers are currently located is probably on the top of their hit list.