In 2009 Fredrik Neij, a co-founder of the file-sharing site the
Pirate Bay, and three co-defendants were found guilty by a Swedish court
of being accessories to copyright violation. Neij was sentenced to a
year, which was later reduced to 10 months. He appealed to the Swedish
Supreme Court, but in February, it was announced that the court would
not hear his case.
So now Neij wants to head to the European Court of Justice.
On Monday, Neij’s attorney Jonas Nilsson wrote in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter
that the Pirate Bay’s structure means that individual users, not the
site’s creators, should be held accountable for copyright infringement
and other crimes. “It’s like penalizing the post office for delivering
mail that contains illegal content,” he writes.
