It looks like the raid on The Pirate Bay and confiscation of its servers upset somebody. That's one conclusion to be drawn from the sudden unavailability of the web site of Sweden's national police. Beginning last night, the the site came under a widespread and intense denial of service attack, according to National Police Administration Director Lars Lindahl.

"Our homepage had to handle 500,000 visits per second and it's obviously not going to handle that. It's sort of like 10,000 people calling the same phone switch at once."

According to Lindahl, the attack began at 9:30pm local time. Judging by the time it's taking to load polisen.se, the attack seems to be still going on in full force, despite assurances that the site would be back up by now. The Swedish police are investigating the origin of the attack.

Warner Music and Sony's web sites were also attacked, but in this case, a single Turkish hacker is thought to be responsible. It's doubtful that the hack is related to the DoS broadside against the Swedish police, although the timing is interesting.

The Pirate Bay is arguably the largest and most popular torrent site in the world, and news of the raid was met with great dismay by fans of the site. Piratpartiet, a Swedish political party affiliated with a view on copyright very similar to The Pirate Bay, has called the raid illegal. They have also accused the Swedish government of responding to pressure from American media companies, a concern shared by others in the country.

"We want to find out whether pressure from the U.S. government was behind the action," Center Party spokesman Johan Linander said. "I think all of this smells of direct political influence and we want to reach clarity about who really did what."

Three people affiliated with the torrent site were taken into custody after the raid and have since been released. Swedish police say that despite their release, they still face possible criminal charges.

The Pirate Bay maintains that the raid was a violation of Swedish law and that the site will be back up "soon," operating from another country this time. In the meantime, Piratpariet and the Pirate Bureau are organizing "Pirate Demonstration Saturday," a protest in Stockholm beginning at 3pm local time.

"This is no longer about just a raid on the Pirate Bay, but has become a major justice scandal. We have contacted all Parliamentary parties and their youth organizations regarding a demonstration we are planning," says Pirate Bureau spokesman Marcin de Kaminski.

Let's be clear about one thing: taking a law enforcement site offline with a DoS attack is bad, m'kay? That said, it is apparent that the action against The Pirate Bay has struck a nerve with the public. It's doubtful that this marks the start of any widespread backlash against Hollywood, the MPAA, and the RIAA. But in Sweden, this looks to be turning into a major political scandal, as accusations of knuckling under to US influence are growing.

Thanks to Anders Bylund for the Swedish-English translation.