Peter Sunde, the founder of The Pirate Bay, is asking for a formal pardon from a judicial system that has been 'steamrolled over by lobbyism and ignorance.' As part of a rather lengthy plea, Sunde asks that the Swedish government issue a pardon not so much for him, but for 'our future culture and communication.'

Way back in 2009, Sunde and several others were sentenced to a year in prison, not to mention well over 10 million euros in damages. And even though pardons are pretty rare, Sunde figures it's at least worth a shot, and at least it gives him a chance to tell his side of the story. Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, has been kind enough to translate Sunde's letter over at his website, but we'll try and save you some time by giving you the gist of it right here.

Sunde starts out by revisiting the circumstances of the infamous Pirate Bay raids, and the protests that followed. Like you might expect, Sunde's version of things is a bit different from the 'official' story. He describes The Pirate Bay like as:

A search engine helping people all over the world to get in touch with each other to exchange information. A search engine so appreciated, that almost every day, a mail arrived from somebody telling the story of how it changed their life. Pictures of tattoos with its logo proudly inked onto someone’s body. Acclaims to the Swedish web service that changed people’s lives.

Regardless of how you feel about The Pirate Bay, Sunde does make a few good points about how willing the media is willing to protect its business model at any cost, even if it means using its political clout to force the US to threaten sanctions (something they're quite fond of doing) against Sweden if it didn't bring down all its might against The Pirate Bay. Once that was out, the previously supportive – or at least vaguely neutral – Swedish prosecution quickly changed its tune and ordered the raid, but not before the Streisand Effect set in and turned the site into one of the web's most popular destinations.

Without getting into the details of the raid, Sunde recounts a really great episode from the trial:

...the lead interrogator Jim Keyzer (who was also responsible for the entire investigation) calls me and tells me I’ll be charged with a crime ... [he] also gives me the tip of picking “just about the first lawyer you can find, as we’re in a hurry to get this over with”. He adds that I should “skip picking a hotshot lawyer from Stockholm” so his work wouldn’t be further delayed. ...I immediately called the first good lawyer I knew, Peter Althin. The policeman got upset and enraged as he had already planned his trip to the city of Malmö, where I would be heard, and found it enraging that he had to schedule a second trip to the city.

Long story short, Sunde says that the whole case boils down to Hollywood's attempts to silence him, to stop the 'free and open, participatory' (i.e. warez heaven) cultural revolution that he sees himself leading. Chances are, you probably already have a pretty good idea of how that went down (and if you don't, just stop now and go read the whole letter).

In the end, Sunde doesn't come anywhere near saying 'sorry,' but he's still hoping for another chance:

I know that I’m at a point where my chance of escaping punishment is less than a tenth of a percent. Not having to go to jail for crimes I didn’t commit. Crimes that weren’t even committed in the first place. Crimes that surely aren’t even crimes to begin with, if they had been committed, and if they had been committed, hadn’t been so by me. And once I’m out of jail, where I’m certainly going to become increasingly bitter over the situation, I have a debt of 100 million SEK (11 million euros). Money in fantasy numbers...

Sunde says that the whole thing is an insult to everything the judicial system is supposed to represent. He's not asking for a pardon for himself. Instead, he says, “Grant the people of Sweden pardon from this corruption.”

So, what's your take? The whole thing probably is a farce (just read the story about the lawyer up above), but we're not so sure that the people of Sweden, or the people of the world, really feel the same way Sunde does. As popular as the Pirate Bay is, the amount of people using it are just a tiny fraction of the population, and at this point Sunde's 'free and open, participatory culture' seems pretty far away. Oh, and before you complain about us rambling along, that was actually a lot shorter than the real letter.

Via: Torrent Freak

Source: Copy Me Happy | Falkvinge (translation of previous) | Image via: Wikimedia Commons