Sweden Pirate Bay files complaint vs MediaDefender

STOCKHOLM, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Swedish file-sharing site Pirate Bay has filed a complaint against units of 10 global entertainment players claiming they hired a U.S. firm to sabotage its Web site, a spokesman said on Monday.

In a blog on its Web site, Pirate Bay said the complaint alleges infrastructural damage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming on a commercial level.

The blog said the complaint named the Swedish or Nordic subsidiaries of Twentieth Century Fox, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Universal Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, Atari ATAR.O, Activision (ATVI.O), Ubisoft (UBIP.PA), Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde said the complaint, filed on Friday, stemmed from e-mails released to the public by hackers after an attack on U.S. firm MediaDefender, an online corporate security company.

He said Pirate Bay's investigation of these e-mails showed the entertainment companies had hired MediaDefender to spam file-sharing sites, including Pirate Bay, with fake downloads.

"So we are actually filing the complaint against them as MediaDefender has no Swedish company structure. But these other companies are represented in Sweden," Sunde said.

Detective Sergeant Jim Keyzer of Stockholm Police IT forensics unit confirmed Pirate Bay had filed a complaint and said he had prepared a report for his superiors. He declined to comment further.

Sunde said Pirate Bay had found a number of IP addresses it has blocked for spamming within the MediaDefender e-mails.

"We found contracts between the clients and MediaDefender, with pricing issues and everything, so we decided we can't do anything more about it than to block them and the IP addresses we found and then file charges, since this is illegal in Sweden," Sunde said.