The Pirate Bay has shipped out of Sweden following the threat of legal action, but the Pirate Party’s ability to react and shift the site onto safer ground shows that the international movement cannot be rattled, party founder Rick Falkvinge told RT.

Following a letter last week from a domestic copyright holder threatening criminal charges against the Swedish Pirate Party for providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, on Tuesday sister parties in Norway and Spain assumed responsibility for the popular file sharing site.

Rick Falkvinge, the first Pirate Party founder and a self-described evangelist of sensible information policy, told RT that despite the fallacious grounds on which the latest legal threat stands, obeying the law “is no guarantee that your life won’t be “ruined by a bought-and-paid-for court system.”

RT:Earlier this month The Rights Alliance sent a letter to your party saying that the Supreme Court of Sweden had decided that “not only those who operate an illegal file-sharing service, but also those who provide internet access to such an illegal service are committing a criminal act.” What is your reaction to this charge? Is the Rights Alliance correctly interpreting Swedish law?

Rick Falkvinge: The law is super-clear on this issue - internet service providers have complete immunity regarding what travels on their wires, as long as they don't actively select what gets to travel there. As long as they stay transport neutral, they have no liability.

However, being in the moral and legal right is something completely different from winning in a courtroom. The Swedish courts have displayed a remarkable and remorseless corruption when it comes to copyright monopoly cases in general, and The Pirate Bay cases in particular.

Besides, this would be a civil case, so we'd have to spend upwards of 100,000 euros just to get a verdict - which may still go against us, in which case we'd have to pay the other side's lawyers too, in addition to losing the case.

RT:The letter further charged that the Swedish Pirate Party was in violation of copyright monopoly law, citing the threat of heavy fine for noncompliance, the payment of legal damages, and even imprisonment as potential punishments. Is there any basis for the claim that by being an internet service provider for The Pirate Bay, you are violating copyright laws, or are these simply empty threats?

RF: The letter mixed apples and oranges to a very deliberate degree. It used a non-legal term to describe how we were part of a copyright monopoly infringement process (yes, of course we were, just as the ones who deliver the electricity were and the ones who clean the offices were - but, the key part, that doesn't make them or us liable or responsible for it, nor should it) and went on to describe how people who had been convicted of being part of such a process had received devastating damages and prison terms.

The obviously skipped step is where you'd have some sort of liability for what travels on your wires. There isn't any, and for good reason: a communications infrastructure must be neutral and immune to what they carry.

For a comparison, the postal services of Europe are the largest narcotics distributors of their respective countries – and yet, nobody would dream of attempting to hold the postal services liable for that. This is a very important principle, that only those who communicate can be held to answer for what they communicate.

RT:Even if you believe that the claims leveled by The Rights Alliance are baseless based on existing Swedish law, do you believe the Swedish Pirate Party would receive a fair and impartial trial if the case went to trial?

RF: Based on observations from the banana-republic justice dealt out in the trial against the two Pirate Bay operators, its media spokesperson, and a fourth unrelated person, the answer would be a certain resounding no. It doesn't matter what the lay of the land and the playing field of the law looks like, when you know you're being handed loaded dice.

In the trial against the Pirate Bay operators, you saw everything from a corrupt judge who was part of the same interest group as the plaintiffs to an investigating police officer who was flat-out hired by Warner Brothers while doing the investigation. It was a travesty of everything justice is supposed to be, and we would have no reason to believe we would be treated differently.

RT:It was also reported that the Pirate Bay will now be hosted by the pirate parties in Norway and Spain. If The Swedish Pirate Party has in fact not violated any laws, then why was the decision made by the Pirate Bay to relocate its webhosting services outside of Sweden?

RF: Not having violated any laws is no guarantee for not having your life ruined by a bought-and-paid-for court system. The operators of The Pirate Bay know this for a fact.

Further, I am grateful that they operators of The Pirate Bay took this step on their own initiative, and spared us the angst of having to make the decision. As the deadline of the threat letter arrived, there was no need to make a fold-or-no-fold decision before the threat - TPB's move of their own initiative had rendered the decision irrelevant, as we were no longer providing bandwidth to the site.

I think it's a good display of solidarity with the fact that we have been providing quite a bit of bandwidth pro bono to them for the past three years.

RT:Why were Norway and Spain chosen as the new location for the Pirate Bay? If similar legal challenges arise in those countries as well, what would be the next step for the file sharing site?

RF: There were several different operational reasons, of which I have merely a small part - this would be for The Pirate Bay to respond to. However, I am happy that we are able to keep The Pirate Bay online as a growing international movement.

I am particularly happy of the symbolism in getting it online in two new places rather than just one. Furthermore, Norwegian media seems ecstatic over the fact that The Pirate Bay comes to Norway – national media there are celebrating it with headlines that look like they just won an Olympic gold medal.

As for a next step, if it should be necessary, there is no shortage of more Pirate Parties that want to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay if it should become necessary. The copyright industry has threatened and silenced three out of 63 (NL, UK, SE). So good luck with that.

RT:Do you believe the Swedish Pirate Party’s separation from The Pirate Bay will have any impact on your party’s political goals?

RF: If anything, I think this has been very well handled. The copyright industry expected us to fold and The Pirate Bay to scramble for somebody else to take them on; I don't think they expected this to end in a display of international solidarity and strength like it did.

I am fairly certain they didn't expect people to be celebrating the opportunity to be providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay.

So at the end of the day, I think it displays a maturity as an international movement that I'm happy to be a part of.