Which is, in any country with a civil law system, a pesky case to make if you don't simultaneously prosecute someone for the actual main crime (in this case infringement of intellectual property).

In this particular trial noone was actually prosecuted for infringement, so many legal experts believe the case won't hold up when it eventually gets to the Supreme Court. If there never was a proven main crime, how can one get sentenced for conspiracy to commit it / accessory in executing it?

Technicalities, sure, but we do have such precedents.

I'm Swedish, and trust me, the prison system here *is* mainly a Broadway show. If they ever get to serve time in actual jail (we have a pretty extensive electronic footlock-system here which makes you being able to serve your sentence at home), they'll probably go to a minimum-security facility with own apartment-style cells with own TV:s, Internet access, nearly unlimited external visitors, the right to wear their own clothes and so on... and most prisoners get paroled (if they showed good behaviour) at around two thirds of the actual time they were sentenced to.

As for the fine... That's a bit of a "so what?" here as well. The Swedish equivalent to the IRS will probably try to foreclose their possessions (real estate, cars, luxury articles and so on), find that they don't possess anything of value and just leave them be with a debt they'll never get to pay off until it is written off (normally after 10 years if the debt is to a private/commercial entity, shorter if you owe the government). Basically, they'll just need to move abroad for a few years (which Svartholm already has, allegedly), and the debt will be gone when (if) they move back.

But...but... if we eliminate the pirates, wouldn't that just speed up global warming even further, and make earth totally uninhabitable? Al Gore, come and save us from zee eeevil environmental-unfriendly pirate-bashing pastafarian-rejecting swedes!!!