The music industry played down the changes as "simplifying the charges".Peter Danowsky, legal counsel for the music companies in the case, said: "It's a largely technical issue that changes nothing in terms of our compensation claims and has no bearing whatsoever on the main case against The Pirate Bay."In fact it simplifies the prosecutor's case by allowing him to focus on the main issue, which is the making available of copyrighted works."
The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 and quickly established itself as the world's most high profile, file-sharing websites. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users. At the start of the trial in Stockholm, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi and Carl Lundstorm were facing a large fine and up to two years in prison, if convicted.
BitTorrent is a legal application used by many file-shares to swap content because of the fast and efficient manner it distributes files.No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users computers.
