While the question is interesting from a law theory perspective, the pirate bay was actually never charged for being in violation of copyright. The court decision referenced a rather obscure law which was intended to address organize crime.<p>The law basically says that if a service is primarily used for illegal purposes, then running that service is illegal under current assisting laws. The intention of the law makers was to give the police the ability to shut down biker bars that was used as headquarters, without the normal procedure of having to find tax crimes or some other excuse to shut it down.<p>The prosecutor in the pirate bay case provided a screenshot of the top 100 shared file list and said that this proved that the primary usage of the site was copyright infringement. The defense argued that you could not determine this, using the long tail argument. The court went with the prosecutors argument and so did the appeal court.