The MPAA wants popular BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay to hand over $15.4 million in damages for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement, but The Pirate Bay's fearless captain Peter Sunde thinks that the movie industry's case doesn't have a peg leg to stand on.

The law firm that is representing the MPAA in Sweden has identified a selection of popular content owned by MPAA members that is made available for unauthorized download by users through The Pirate Bay. The lawyers based the requested damages on the value of each movie or television episode (ranging between $37 and $68) and the number of estimated downloads (ranging between thousands and tens of thousands). How they selected the individual works and determined the total number of downloads isn't clear.

The unflappable Sunde isn't impressed with the claims. He told Swedish newspaper SvD that the figure is a fabrication and that the content industry should be thanking him instead of attempting to sue him. "We might be able to pay in Monopoly money. This proves that they are out of touch with reality. They might as well ask for a billion crowns. This is fear-based propaganda; they're trying to make it sound serious when we link to things that you download from elsewhere," Sunde told SvD. "We should send them an invoice instead. All research shows that file-sharing grows the market for the movie industry. I go by research; they make it up as they go."

We asked the MPAA for additional details and comments, but the organization declined to provide further clarification, and said only that "a claim for damages has been filed and it is now a matter for the Swedish court."

The increasingly embattled Pirate Bay is also facing an onslaught from Swedish prosecutors as well as litigation from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which wants $2.5 million.

Although the situation looks stormy for The Pirate Bay, the feisty torrent tracker has recovered from far worse in the past. Following a raid conducted by Swedish law enforcement agents in 2006, The Pirate Bay recovered and was seaworthy again within three days despite being declared completely sunk by the MPAA.

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