The Pirate Bay's enemies are circling it like a pack of hungry sharks, waiting for it to slip. First there is the Swedish government assault, led by prosecutor Håkan Roswall, who seeks to press charges against The Pirate Bay before January 31, 2008.  The planned charges will be against multiple pirate bay admins for allegedly supporting copyright infringement on a massive scale.

On top of the Swedish government, The Pirate Bay has the rock funkster Prince (formerly known as the Artist formerly known as Prince), showering Purple Rain on The Pirate Bay's parade of piracy.  The colorful icon announced that he was going to "reclaim the internet" by attacking The Pirate Bay, eBay, and YouTube, which he sees as a triad of sinister copyright infringement.  The royal rocker is not going it alone either; he has enlisted the help of internet guns-for-hire Web Sheriff and Web Sheriff president John Giacobbi in its bid to take down these three offenders.

Completing its array of enemies is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, who is rather nonplussed over The Pirate Bay's domain name takeover of ifpi.com.  They have filed an official complaint with domain name arbitrator World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in hopes of reclaiming their lost bounty, and are mulling over additional legal action against the site.  The Pirate Bay faces a heady battle against the WIPO complaint, as the IFPI works closely with the WIPO and both organizations cite close cooperation on their respective webpages.  The IFPI insist that this feel good friendship will not affect the status of the complaint, as the WIPO will allegedly use impartial legal and knowledgeable professional counsel to make its decision.

Not so says The Pirate Bay admin Peter Sunde, one of the two people currently named in the pending Swedish charges. "I'm quite sure it will not be a fair arbitration. IFPI and WIPO are in cooperation with each other (just look at WIPO's homepage where they say they work close together with, for instance, IFPI)," Sunde says.

Sunde and other admins at The Pirate Bay have been stalked recently by strange cars, with passengers snapping pictures.  Some think these not-so-subtle followers are under the pay of Prince, while others speculate that the Swedish government is using them to try to gather up some sort of evidence.

Curiously, Carl Lundström, who at one time provided bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, is the other person who the Swedish government has currently announced its intention to charge.  Lundström only had a casual relationship with the site, but some as he is a famed Swedish political extremist; some see the charges as the Swedish government's way of striking back at him, for his past stands.

Peter Sunde, in a recent interview with Ars Technica, was confident that it would be Swedish government who would be swimming with the fish in terms of a legal outcome.  He stated of Swedish prosecutor Håkan Roswall and the case, "I'm quite confident we're gonna win and I was expecting this to happen.  Roswall is also a very biased man, so I'm glad to take it to court instead of letting him dig around my personal life for no apparent reason. Actually, it's kinda funny."

And that's just the spirit one would expect out of the officials of the carefree, yet quixotically feisty site which early this year sought to buy its own island nation to avoid the mounting legal issues.  It’s clear that many parties are eager to bring the fight to The Pirate Bay, but it looks like The Pirate Bay is equally eager to fight back.