Last week, The Pirate Bay announced that it filed charges against against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. We asked Brokep, one of The Pirate Bay founders to give us some more background information on this counterattack that will, once again, embarrass the entertainment industry.

The Pirate Bay filed charges against 10 major media companies, including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group. Fighting fire with fire some would say, but what’s really motivating them to take on these companies?

TorrentFreak: What is the main reason why you decided to file charges?

Brokep: To make the big companies aware about their own wrong doings. They are huge corporations where I’m sure a lot of different people decide. I don’t want that to be an excuse, I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff. We need to make a statement that just because something might be hard to fight it doesn’t mean that laws do not imply in the case.

TorrentFreak: In your blog post you said that the MediaDefender leaks started all this. Have you contacted MediaDefender about this suing of their clients?

Brokep: Yes. I talked to Randy Saaf, he sounded like a nice guy but he didn’t want to talk about it. He basically said “you do what you have to do” and honestly – if it were my clients, I would be a bit more eager to not get them in trouble.

TorrentFreak: What’s the legal status of the leaked emails, can they be used in the lawsuit as evidence?

Brokep: Yes. We have something called “fri bevisprÃ¶vning” in Sweden which means that evidence, no matter how they’re obtained, can be used.

TorrentFreak: Do you have any other evidence against the media companies?

Brokep: Yes, stuff like our own logs of the connections from MD and such.

TorrentFreak: Have you heard anything from the companies you pressed charges against?

Brokep: No. We tried having a debate in national swedish radio but they refused to talk to us. They sent a note using IFPI saying “we will not talk about unserious claims like this”. It’s a twist of irony. They do illegal stuff and it’s unserious claims, we do stuff they consider immoral and they force the police to help them out. How’s that for democracy…

TorrentFreak: What message do you want to send out to the movie and music studios and anti-piracy companies like MediaDefender,and what else do you hope to accomplish by pressing charges?

Brokep: That you can’t fight file sharing. You have to join it, embrace it and adopt to it. It’s the only way, like it or not. It’s not going away, it’s grows every day and it’s for a good reason – the people want it. And the people are their customers, why fight them? Listen to them.

TorrentFreak: Thanks Brokep, and good luck of course!