The web hotel PRQ and The Pirate Bay was the target of one of the most talked-about raids of the 21st century in Sweden. During the raid the police didn’t just confiscate Pirate Bay’s servers but also a load of other unrelated servers; a total of 186 servers were confiscated from PRQ’s server rooms. This led to that a big number of companies and a lot of small and large websites lost their servers and in many cases their primary livelihood. Both the police and the prosecutor were charged for official misconduct, but none of the charges led to an investigation. The judge came to the conclusion that during the circumstances it was justified to confiscate all of the servers.
Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has since then been investigating if there have been any irregularities. There were quite a lot of rumors going around that MPA, IFPI and other lobby organizations, but also the American embassy, was trying to steer ministers and other high officials to pressure the police and prosecutors to act against The Pirate Bay.
The report that have been published clearly states that IFPI, MPA and the American embassy had contacted the current Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and the Secretary of State Dan Eliasson in an attempt to make them force the police into action. Although, JO has come to the conclusion that none of the two have done anything to wrong nor have they tried to influence the police or prosecutor. Eliasson wrote the following in his reply to the American authorities;
“(a)ccording to the Swedish constitution, it is not possible for the Government or the Ministry to intervene in a specific case. I can however assure you that I follow closely the actions taken by the police and the prosecutors in respect of copyrights infringements on the Internet and I will not, if necessary, hesitate to initiate further measures to improve their effectiveness”
JO also says that the police could’ve acted a lot faster when it comes to the confiscated servers. It took them over a week before they decided to give back some of the servers that was not related to Pirate Bay (from May 31 to 2-8 June). JO adds though that the decision to remove the servers was correct as it, according to the police, would take a lot longer to investigate them in place than at the station.
JO did not buy the explanation that they had to remove the servers because otherwise someone could’ve come in from the outside and delete material. JO though that they could just as well have unplugged the TP cable, but the time argument was enough to not charge anyone for misconduct.
