Four Swedish internet pirates today faced the wrath of Hollywood’s entertainment industry as the biggest file sharing court case since Napster began in Stockholm, Sweden.

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The four men on trial are the brains behind the Pirate Bay – the world’s largest file sharing website. They are charged with accessory to breaking copyright law by helping millions of Internet users download protected works. The Pirate Bay doesn't host copyrighted content, but directs users to the material using a popular downloading client called BitTorrent.

Fredrik Neij, 30, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 24, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, 30, and Carl Lundström, 48, claim they have done nothing wrong but if convicted they could face up to two years in prison and pay damages of 93 million SEK (nearly £8million).

It is likely that whoever loses the trial will appeal to a higher court. The defendants believe that they will be cleared of any wrongdoing and told The Independent that any other outcome would be a “would be a political travesty.”

“No matter if we win or lose, file sharing will continue. When all this is finished it is not certain that the Pirate Bay is relevant any more, as one year on the internet is like ten human years,” said Tobias Andersson, the spokesman for the organisation.

With more than 25 million unique users the Pirate Bay is the most visible member in a growing international anti-copyright — or pro-piracy — movement that is striking terror in the heart of the entertainment industry.

It is estimated that file sharing accounts for nearly 60 per cent of all internet usage, and around 10 per cent of all downloads are made by people in the UK.

The website was started by the so called ‘Pirate Bureau’ in 2003, two years after Napster lost its court case against the music industry. The Pirate Bay quickly became the most popular place for internet users who wanted to download the latest films, TV shows, games and music.

What sets the Pirate Bay apart from other file sharing sites is that it publicly defend file sharing and claims it is a ‘force of good’:

“The entertainment industry is spending their last money on suing us rather than investing in new business models. It will hopefully be the demise of slow fat giants and the birth of an artist friendly, consumer friendly and sound creating culture,” Mr Andersson said.

This view is echoed by Rick Falkvinge, the leader of the ‘Pirate Party’, a Swedish political party formed as a result of the growing concern amongst the file sharing community that their civil liberties were being clamped down on as a result of the entertainment industry’s powerful lobby. The party has over 9,700 members and received 34,918 votes in the last general election.

“We believe that peoples’ right to free access to culture has greater value to society than the right of the holder of the copyright to get paid,” Mr Falkvinge said.

“This trial is about ideology and politics and you can draw parallels about this case to the past. When the printing press was invented in the 16th century the French establishment wanted it banned because they feared they wouldn’t be able to control the masses, but they couldn’t stop it. When libraries were launched in the UK the 19th century the establishment claimed that no more books would ever be written as a result because authors would never be able to survive if people read books for free. Clearly this is not the case,” he added.

The prosecution dismisses the idea that the trial may have a significant ideological importance. Monique Wadsted is representing Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, MGM and Columbia:

“This trial is not about ideology or politics. The Pirate Bay is a commercial business and its owners are making a vast amount of money by breaking copyright laws on a daily basis. They will go to jail for this,” she said.

“It is a very important case as the outcome will affect all creative artists and publishers and how they will be able to survive in the future,” she added.

The chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents music and film producers in the case said: “The Pirate Bay is a commercial business which made substantial amounts of money for its operators, despite their claim to be only interested in spreading culture for free."

The Pirate Bay’s owners claim they spend all the revenue from advertising on legal and web hosting costs, but Ms Wadsted does not believe this is the case and her legal team estimates that the Pirate Bay accumulate 1,2 million SEK (£100,000) per year in advertising revenue. “We have found out that they have set up a company on the British Virgin Islands, but we are not able to find out how much are in these accounts,” Ms Wadsted said.

Despite the entertainment industry’s knowledge of the website it has taken them six years to bring the four pirates to justice.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who sees Pirate Bay as the top offender in the ever-increasing piracy movement urged the Swedish government to take action against the site in 2005. In May 2006 the Pirate Bay’s headquarters were raided by the Swedish police and all its servers were confiscated.

Thinking it had scored a major victory, the MPAA thought it had scored a major victory, producing a news release entitled “Swedish Authorities Sink Pirate Bay".

But the celebration didn't last long. The website was back online three days later, and its closure sparked mass protests and generated so much sympathy for the pro-file sharing cause that both candidates for prime minister announced publicly that they did not think young file-sharers should be treated as criminals.

“It is very difficult to say what the outcome of this case will be,” said David Price, head of piracy intelligence at the internet consultancy Envisional.

“Who ever loses the case will undoubtedly appeal. But it is clear that if the Pirate Bay wins the case it will be a symbolic victory for file-sharers across the world and a huge blow for the entertainment industry,” he added.

“Even if the Pirate Bay loses this case it will be extremely difficult for the authorities to shut the site down because it is an internationally hosted site. If the servers in Sweden get shut down they will simply open more in other countries,” Mr Price said.

BitTorrent, the downloading system which the Pirate Bay uses is the most popular way of downloading large files off the internet due to its speed and ease of use.

Unlike other download methods, BitTorrent maximises transfer speed by gathering pieces of the file in demand and downloading these pieces simultaneously from people who already have them. The more people downloading a file, the faster everyone gets it.

The Pirate Bay only hosts the so-called Torrent files which mean that no actual copyrighted material is stored on their website; it merely points your computer in the right direction to where to collect it.

“The Pirate Bay is merely a tracker of torrents. No copyrighted material ever passes our servers. One cannot sue the maker of a crowbar for burglaries, simply because the thief might use a crowbar. It is up to the users to share whatever they want. There is no criminal intent,” Mr Andersson said.

Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, a British civil liberties group devoted to the digital universe is worried that the trial will make heroes out of the file-sharers and polarise the debate which he believes is less about ideology and more about failing business models.

“People want an 'all-you-can-eat' music service at a low price so they can experiment. They don't want to pay per download. But we've waited years for such a service and there's no sign of agreement from the four global record companies. It’s a similar story with the film industry, they just need to wake up and get on with the job," he said.

Free services like the newly launched ‘Spotify’ where music is streamed with adverts rather than downloaded are being hailed as the future of music on the internet as consumers no longer need to own media in order to consume it. BBC’s iPlayer and its American counterpart Hulu are other examples of how the entertainment industry is trying to catch up consumers’ demands for a high quality free service. In a world where consumers have increasing access to the Internet on their mobile phones and laptops the need to download entertainment is becoming increasingly superfluous.

“If the entertainment industry gives consumers the means to access media in a simple and accessible way they will not bother to illegally download music, TV shows and films,” said Mr Price.

“And if you can’t win the fight against the pirates you simply have to learn from them and use it to your advantage.”