The Swedish prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall has announced the charges against four individuals involved with The Pirate Bay . The four, aged 23 to 37, are being charged with "assisting copyright infringement" of 4 software applications, 9 films and 22 music tracks.

“The operation of The Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues. In that way it commercially exploits copyright-protected work and performances,” said prosecutor Hakan Roswall in a statement. The prosecution claims the site generates annual ad revenue of more than $3 million, a figure that was taken completely out of context, according to Pirate Bay admin Brokep.

Roswall consequently asks the court for a $188,000 fine for the four individuals – Fredrik Neij (“TiAMO”), Gottfrid Svartholm (“Anakata”), Peter Sunde (“Brokep”) and businessman Carl LundstrÃ¶m – and the confiscation of their computers. Among the works that were mentioned in the charges are “Let It Be” from the Beatles and Harry Potter’s “The Goblet of Fire”. In addition the four face up to 2 years in prison, but this is very unlikely based on the evidence gathered by the authorities.

The plaintiffs, including Warner Bros., Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI have until the end of February to file claims for damages.

In a response to the charges, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde (“Brokep”) told TorrentFreak: “We’re of course interested in seeing the outcome of the case, and we welcome that they want to try to criminalize something we already know is legal.”

The legal investigation started almost two years ago, after the controversial raid on the Pirate Bay in May 2006. At the time the Swedish police confiscated 180 servers, most of which had nothing to do with TPB. Last December the investigation finally came to an end, resulting in 4,000 pages of legal paperwork.

The users of the site don’t have to worry that the site will be taken offline though, no matter what the court decides. “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more,” Sunde said.

As we wrote earlier today, The Pirate Bay is not hosted in Sweden anymore. In fact, the Pirate Bay crew claims that they themselves have no idea where the servers are located. After the raid on their servers in 2006, they decided that it was better not to know where they are. One thing is sure though, they are not hosted in just a single country.

Responses

Spokesman for pro-file sharing group PiratbyrÃ¥n, Magnus Eriksson, said: “The Pirate Bay is not going to be down for a single minute. The Pirate Bay is now established in a number of countries, so there’s no one place in which to push the off button”

Ludvig Werner, chairman of the Swedish arm of the IFPI said: “The Pirate Bay operation has caused massive financial damage to rights holders. The profiteers behind The Pirate Bay have no interest in free speech, and they are not running The Pirate Bay because they love music and films. They are totally mercenary and are driven by the desire for personal wealth.”

According to Heise, Magnus Eriksson is not so sure any of the Pirate Bay crew will be convicted: “It’s not very likely” he said. “In the course of the investigation there have been attempts to bring up various things that The Pirate Bay has supposedly been guilty of. Before it was financial crime, and now this accessory thing seems to be the last straw for the prosecutor”

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI said: “The operators of The Pirate Bay have always been interested in making money, not music.The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a par with Russia.”

This article has been updated