A new video streaming service is set to feature music and film

Peter Sunde, a co-founder of high-profile file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, says new legal action against the site is nothing more than "harassment".

Thirteen Hollywood production companies filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to try to get the website shut down.

In April the site's founders were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

However, the site remains open and users can share copyrighted content.

"We have filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay because they have not stopped their activities after they were sentenced to prison," the studios' lawyer Monique Wadsted told AFP.

The lawsuit has been brought by Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Universal Studios and 10 other firms, many of which were due to receive damages form the April settlement.

But in keeping with their well-established stance of indifference to legal action, Mr Sunde told BBC News: "I'm on vacation, sleeping a lot and eating great vegan food.

"The latest threats are just harassments from the industry of course. We've actually asked the courts to punish them with a high fine for the faulty threats."

The Pirate Bay was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content was hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead it hosted links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Following the most recent lawsuit, the site was bought by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) for 60m kronor (£4.7m) who intend to turn the site into a legal, pay service.

The new owners have outlined a "give and take" model which pays users for sharing their resources.