According to the charges, revenue made from advertising on the Web site totals at least 1.2 million Swedish krona, equivalent to approximately US$190,000. The prosecutor is calling for the Pirate Bay four to forfeit that sum to Swedish authorities.

On top that, they risk prison sentences if found guilty.

Along with the charges, Håkan Roswall submitted a number of invoices connected to ad revenue, in order to prove commercial interests in distributing copyright infringing material.

Peter Sunde, spokesperson for The Pirate Bay and one of the four being charged, claims the calculations submitted today are based on invoices not related to the controversial web site, but was not able to present a real figures when asked.

”Obviously it's uncomfortable to be prosecuted”, says Peter Sunde. ”But no one of the involved has intentionally done anything illegal.”

Three of the people included in the indictment are directly connected to the running of the site and have openly said so in the media. The fourth person is a former CEO of operator Rix Port80, at the time of his tenure known as Rix Telecom, accused of supplying hardware and bandwidth to The Pirate Bay.

While the validity of the calculations remain to be verified by the first instant court in Stockholm, Henrik Pontén, legal council of the Swedish Anti-piracy Bureau regards them as an indicator that online piracy has become about more than free content.

”We see a clear trend towards piracy becoming even more commercial”, he says. ”While some want to ignore it, the preliminary investigation shows that an affluent CEO of an ISP has made money that should have been earned by the creators.”

The prosecutor claims the four worked together to administer, host and develop the Web site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law.

In total, 34 cases of copyright infringements are listed, of which 21 are related to music files, nine to movies and four to games.