The Pirate Bay, the controversial BitTorrent tracking site in Sweden, has become ensnared in a grisly, high-profile scandal involving the online circulation of autopsy pictures of two murdered children.

The incident is the latest of a string in which The Pirate Bay has hit the headlines because of its founders' unbending stance that changing their policies would impinge upon freedom of speech and access to information.

In this latest dispute, the Swedish media are focusing on The Pirate Bay's refusal to remove the links to the torrents of photos uploaded to the internet by its users of photos of two dead children.

The photos are from a police case file concerning the murder of two toddlers in March in Arboga, a town in the Southeastern part of Sweden. The case is being heavily covered by the media.

The father of the children has asked the operators of the site to remove the links, but they've declined to do so, based on the group's anti-censorship policies.

The Pirate Bay's co-founder Peter Sunde in a post on his personal blogasks why the Swedish media isn't focusing either on the individual who had uploaded the photo, or on the country's laws regarding the way the government classifies information and provides access to government documents. In this case, someone had accessed the police investigation file, uploaded a torrent file of the photo onto the internet, and linked to the torrent on The Pirate Bay.

Under Swedish law, most documents generated by the government are made available to the public unless specifically deemed secret by the courts. In this case, the documents were not sealed by the court.

The operators of the site announced on their blog Friday that they would no longer speak with the media after an incident on a Swedish television station, which Sunde effectively characterized as an ambush.

"Due to last nights failure from the entity of respected traditional media to keep promises we have decided to suspend all of our contacts with the press for the time being," reads the post. "All planned and booked interviews are to be considered suspended. All future interviews are to be considered impossible. We have no longer any interest in participating in traditional media since it's apparant that thet are not trustworthy or willing to adopt (sic.)"

"The mail sent to the press spokes person will not be read. The phone will not be answered."

The Pirate

Bay has always been cautious of the mainstream media, but in 2006 let

Wired.com's Quinn Norton into its inner circle, where she wrote about the group, the issues and the technologies extensively.

Sunde participated in a television interview with Sweden's TV4 Thursday night, as he recounts on his personal blog. He says that he was promised that the interview would focus on policy and the issues of censorship and what gets published on the internet. He also says that he told the show's producers that he would not participate if the father of the murdered children was going to be on the program because it would be impossible to "conduct a fruitful debate."

But when he arrived at the studio, he was faced with the father of the children who was participating remotely, and asked what he had to say to him, he recounts in a long and angry blog post.

"The media does not want to report that there are people who want to share the material," Sunde writes on his blog.

Instead, they want to pick on The Pirate Bay and go after sensational headlines, he writes.

"Nobody cares about contacting the prosecutor in this case, and asking why this is not classified."

"Pirate Bay has been described in Swedish media as 'publisher' of the photos, which is technically not correct," says Mikael Pawlo, an internet entrepreneur based in Stockholm who's been following the case. "But Pirate Bay only provides aggregated tracking information on the torrents, which are in turn distributed peer-to-peer, without ever being relayed through Pirate Bay."

But he adds: "Pirate Bay is also in practice the main distributor of information on how to download the photos."

He says that public opinion might have turned against the founders of The Pirate Bay because of one of its representatives' rude mannerism when he initially responded to the father's request.

Generally, it's been difficult to focus the discussion about The Pirate Bay's role and policy issues because the public is mainly concerned about the integrity of the children, and the actual impact that the internet distribution of the photos might have on the father, he says.

Sunde himself notes that the company has implemented filters on its system against pornography, and has stood up for its principles – and that he personally is someone who is deeply invested in living an ethical life, citing his vegetarianism and philanthropic activities.

Nevertheless, based on incidents such as these, the media characterizes the operators of The Pirate Bay as "terrorists," and as people "totally without emotion," and as "bloodthirsty devils," he writes.

"Shame on you Sweden. And shame on you in the media," he writes in his blog post entitled "Grow Up Sweden!"

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