Last week Mega Upload went kaput during the 'unrelated' SOPA extravaganza.
And any that are familiar with the site will know that The Pirate Bay is still standing, waving its tally-whacker from across the sea in contempt at US and well, anywhere else's copyright laws.

TPB makes no apology for what they do, publicizing their cease and desist emails from various irate corporations lawyers and their own responses, making it clear in no uncertain terms "We are in Sweden, your laws can't touch us."

So what gives? What is the law in Sweden which makes the website untouchable?

From what I can gather, since no information holding the offending material is actually stored on the site, they aren't actually breaking any laws. Is this why there seems to be no way to shut them down?

Don't get me wrong, I may or may not have used TPB in the past, I may or may not use it in the future, I am only asking purely out of morbid curiosity. I'm not interested in moral ambiguity, in arguing whether copyright piracy is wrong or not. I just want to know what it is about the site and where it is hosted that makes it such an issue to copyright holders.