According to Gottfrid Svarholm, the young man who started the website, being called a ‘computer nerd’ isn’t offensive, but he admits that he prefers to be called ‘the captain in Sweden’s battle against corporate America’.

In November 2003, Svarholm shook up the world of entertainment by starting the world’s biggest file-sharing site and boldly named it The Pirate Bay. Today, the entertainment industry is locked in a nasty battle with him and his allegedly illegal business in a Swedish court.

Svarholm argues that he is not stealing anything, and that the business is absolutely legal.

“In the way Swedish copyright law is written, you’re not actually committing a crime if you're referencing to pirate material,” he says.

Media giants like Time Warner, MGM and Universal disagree, and are claiming $13 million in lost revenue from Pirate Bay alone. Their lobbyists in Sweden presented evidence suggesting the file-sharing site is a multi-million dollar business with offshore accounts and trust funds worldwide.

“The Pirate Bay has been making money by helping people to commit a crime – the people who are using the content the creators have made, without paying,” said Henrik Ponten, Anti-Piracy Bureau lawyer.

Pirate Bay says it has 22 million users a month. It allows anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to download the latest media free of charge. It has been accused of violating the copyright laws of most countries, but it is so popular that it has become the norm.

Every day, millions of people both upload and download pirated music, movies or software on the web, taking their chances that they won’t get caught. With The Pirate Bay trial, many users argue that they are simply exercising their basic human rights.

“It’s not about getting free music,” said Christian Engstrom from the Pirate Party.

“It’s about the right to communicate without the authorities, listening in every conversation you have. The only way to stop downloading is to monitor all that ordinary citizens do on the net. We don’t want that kind of society.”

As a result of what the Pirate Party calls ‘Sweden succumbing to pressure from the US’, a law came into effect this month obliging Internet providers to reveal names and addresses of people suspected of sharing pirated files.

The anti-piracy lobby considers the law a major victory. They now hope the pirates will get locked up and their profits will continue unabated.

Regardless, file swappers say trying to stop them is like swimming against the tide. Many are convinced that even if Pirate Bay sinks, another file sharing site will set sail again.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology has acknowledged The Pirate Bay’s historical significance by placing one of its now unused servers on display, reports The Register website. The server was among those confiscated by police during a raid in May 2006 and recently returned to the owners. The museum purchased it for about $245 and made it part of a display which aims ‘to stimulate interest in finding out more about the area of intellectual property rights’.