police organized a raid on The Pirate Bay in 12 different premises, confiscating 186 servers and causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled, the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the media coverage. The raid, alleged by The Pirate Bay to be politically motivated and under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath but with the website being restored within days and file sharing firmly in focus in the Swedish media, with TorrentFreak calling the raid "highly unsuccessful". The police, however, conducted a preliminary investigation on the confiscated material and by interrogating associated people. In late 2007, a four thousand page report was produced by the prosecutor in preparation for a trial, containing email and SMS messages, payment documents, police interrogation records, and screenshots of The Pirate Bay site. Trial and courtroom charges On 31 January 2008 Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four individuals they associated with The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws". One of the artists represented by IFPI, Max Peezay, withdrew from the case, decreasing his distributor's compensation demand by 120 000 SEK. Peezay hadn't been asked about participating in the case, and he in fact supports file sharing for private use. Peezay noted however that being unfamiliar with the site, his withdrawal shouldn't be interpreted as a sign of support for their case. The trial began in February 2009. The evidence used in the trial was based on the material acquired in the 2006 raid. The Swedish national television broadcaster Sveriges Television considered the trial important and provided a live online feed of the entire trial, which had never been done in Sweden before. The live audio and archive sections done in cooperation with Dagens Eko were part of the 24 Direkt program, which became one of their most viewed online content during the trial, second only to Melodifestivalen. The trial was also broadcast live by Swedish public radio. The defendants referred to the trial as a "Spectrial", which is a portmanteau of "trial" and "spectacle", and set up a blog to inform users on the event. The term has also caught on with some bloggers and supporters. First day of the trial On 16 February 2009 defence lawyer Per E. Samuelson stressed to the court