By Katherine Dunn, International News Services

Anti-piracy organisations are hailing as a victory the conviction in
their home country Sweden of the founders of the world's largest 'torrent'
digital fire-sharing site The Pirate Bay. But the case is really just
another round in an ongoing game of whack-a-mole that has seen national law
unable to contain transnational intellectual property rights infringement.

While the founders will get jail time and have been slapped with an enormous
fine, even their imprisonment won't keep the site out of operation. After a
former raid put the site out of commission for only three days, the founders
scattered servers across Europe, so a raid on any one location will result
in a shutdown of only moments.
And The Pirate Bay is only one in a spectrum of file-sharing options, most
of which link to popular movies, music, and games - often appearing online
before they're commercially available and coming, of course, for free. It's
hard for a consumer to resist this all-you-can-eat illicit digital buffet,
with the level of successful prosecution low and legal options often plagued
with licensing costs and bureaucracy.
Besides, for every site that goes down or sees its content scaled back, five
more seem to appear. Prosecutors may liken file sharing to weeds, but for
the consumer, this means there's little reason to stem their downloading.
And the Pirate Bay founders may offer another threat - a political movement.
Known for taunting major companies by printing their cease-and-desist emails
online - next to their mocking replies - they have pitted themselves as
anti-copyright crusaders fighting against a greedy and outdated US-dominated
intellectual property lobby.
The rise of Sweden's 'Pirate Party' and spin-offs in other European
countries has seen some politicians reluctant to slap harsh sentences on
those who illegally download, and is making outspoken web-pirates
increasingly bold.