The request from four major record labels to fine the Pirate Bay operators for every day the site remains up and running was declined by the Swedish District Court today. Contrary to what the labels had requested, the court said it wants to hear the defendants before it will take any action.

In an attempt to prevent The Pirate Bay from linking to copyright infringing material, Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner have asked the court to issue penalties to the site’s operators for every day they continue to keep the tracker and website online.

In the request to the District Court, music industry lawyer Peter Danowsky had pointed out that The Pirate Bay links to hundreds of music albums to which the record labels own the rights. The labels consequently demanded action, and wanted the Pirate Bay team to remove the torrents, close the site or pay up. The labels further asked the court to apply financial penalties immediately, without hearing the opinions of the defendants.

Interestingly, Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has stated that they were never asked by the record labels to remove any of the torrents Danowsky referred to in his request to the District Court. Sunde, who is one of the defendants himself, despised the actions of the record labels and said that they are only interested in money and power, and not the artists they claim to represent.

After reviewing the case, the District Court has denied the labels’ demands today, and said that they will give the Pirate Bay operators a few weeks to state their position in the dispute. The record labels are also given a week to, should they chose, appeal the District Court’s decision to the Court of Appeal.

Judge Caroline Hindmarsh who reviewed the demands and made the decision said: “I don’t think these are circumstances where the case must be tried immediately. Usually you get to make your statement before a demand like this is granted”

The record labels have not yet decided whether to appeal the District Court’s decision. “We will decide tomorrow if we will appeal or not”, said Peter Danowsky in a comment. Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay keeps serving millions of BitTorrent users as usual.