The extent of US influence over Sweden’s crackdown on Pirate Bay has been revealed over a decade later, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by TorrentFreak.
The documents show the methods used by the US government to pressure Sweden to crack down on the torrent site a decade ago. Pirate Bay was discussed at the highest political level, TorrentFreak reports. The US government responded to the 2014 Freedom of Information Act request by supplying 467 documents, 19 released in full and 23 with excisions. Four remaining documents require “intra-agency or interagency coordination.”
Six months before Pirate Bay’s office in Sweden was raided in 2006, a November 2005 cable (page 1) from the US embassy in Sweden relayed details of a meeting between US Ambassador Miles T. Bivins, Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Bureau. The MPAA and Anti-Privacy Bureau also met with then-Swedish State Secretary of Justice Dan Eliasson.
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