Well, the truth is that ThePirateBay never did copy other people's work, it was the people seeding and leeching the torrent that did so, and broke the law, even in Sweden.

That is the essence in this case, thepiratebay folks are only maintaining a site which indexes and presents user content (ie torrents), no where along the line do they infringe on someone's copyright. The scary part is that you can easily draw parallels, and perhaps eventually cite precedence, from thepiratebay to for example google or even ISPs, as they both contribute to illegal downloads. The latter will likely be the next group up for court, which is already happening in Denmark and Norway.