While the Pirate Bay has been known for quite some time among many people, the moment that really got them the most attention was when (thanks to pressure from the US) Swedish officials took the site down and began an investigation. It only took a little while for the site to come back up, after which traffic shot up in large part thanks to the press attention from the recording industry declaring "victory" over the site being down. The Swedish investigation, however, has apparently had a tough time figuring out if The Pirate Bay actually breaks any laws. After all, it's really just a search engine for content. The company doesn't host any of that content itself. Admittedly, plenty of content you can find from The Pirate Bay is unauthorized, but some of it is perfectly legitimate. The people who are making content available may be breaking copyright law, but simply indexing and pointing people to that content should be perfectly legal.

It seems hard to justify going after the Pirate Bay for anything, and it's taken Swedish investigators well over a year to come up with charges it can throw at the operators of the site -- though it sounds like they won't be filed for a few months. Oddly, it seems that part of the strategy isn't just to go after the folks who run the site, but also one of their employers, who is apparently a politically controversial figure. Torrentfreak suggests that this move is designed to move public sympathy against the site, though until the evidence is presented, it's difficult to assume anything. No matter who is charged and for what, get ready for the next case to watch in the ongoing global game of legal whack-a-mole by the recording industry.

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