Piratbyrån comments on TPB case delay

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall was, once again, granted extra time to press charges against TPB. The case has been delayed to October 1st. Swedish pro-piracy organisation Piratbyrån has commented on this, and even released an english translation.

I'll quote their press release here:

As expected, the prosecutor Håkan Roswall got prolonged time to bring a legal action against The Pirate Bay until October 1st 2007. More unexpected is the reasons given and the grounds for the decision.

- For a discrict court the reasons might seems sufficient, but for someone familiar with the case and the technique the arguments doesn't add up, says Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyrån.

Lets analyze the reasons given one by one:

"That the analyzis of confiscated equipment are still under way and that the equipment to a large extent consist of servers, which makes the work much more time-consuming."

- A server is not a multi-purpose machine like a regular computer. Contrary to what Roswall claims, it's often adapted to only one purpose. Therefore, the investigation of a server should be less time-consuming than that of a personal computer. Still Roswall claims that he can't return the servers even after a year of investigation.

"That he awaits the opinion of the state crime lab regarding analyzis of scripts and documentation of the torrent database."

- TPB consists of around 6000 lines of specially written code, or 16 lines of code to analyze each day. Up to three police officers have been dedicated to this for a year. What The Pirate Bay tracker and torrent site does should be obvious for everyone today.

"That the investigation regarding economic exchange in the activity of the Pirate Bay is still going on."

- If you haven't found anything illegal in an investigation of economic activity after a year, there is nothing there. No matter how much you wished it was!

"That encrypted information has been encountered in some of the confiscated computers that hasn't been cracked."

- This encrypted data does not belong to The Pirate Bay, but to the customers of Internet service providers PRQ. But only confiscation and investigation of equipment belonging to The Pirate Bay was allowed. Besides, a standard level encryption today takes about 40 years to crack. That's a lot of appeals for prolonged preliminary investigation!

"A large number of people have been actualized in the investigation. These must be questioned before the investigation can be completed."

- What is a "large number"? Two, five, a dozen? Who are they and why haven't they been actualized until now? The few people working with The Pirate Bay have been public and there are no army of secret co-workers!

These reasons given to the district court was found sufficient to grant the prolonging of the investigation. As we can see they do not stand up to a closer examination.

[Contact info and a paragraph about Piratbyrån removed]