Visitors at a computer fair in Hannover, Germany, in March 2004. The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most popular websites for the illegal downloading of films through filesharing, has said it wanted to buy its own island in a bid to avoid copyright laws. [AFP]

Stockholm - The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most popular websites for the illegal downloading of films through filesharing, has said it wanted to buy its own island in a bid to avoid copyright laws.

"It's not only about Pirate Bay, it's more about having a nation with no copyright laws," one of those behind the site, who gave his name only as Peter, said Friday.

The group said it would consider any territory in international waters to avoid copyright legislation.

"For Pirate Bay it would be awesome to have no copyright law. All countries today are based on the old economy and old ideas and we want to do something new," he added.

On Friday the group established a website -- www.buysealand.com -- as a discussion forum and to raise funds to buy Sealand, a former British naval platform and self-proclaimed principality six miles (10 kilometres) off the eastern coast of Britain.

No country recognises Sealand.

Sealand, world's smallest country on sale. [file]

"We would love Sealand because its history is perfect for us as pirate radio used to be broadcast from there. If we don't get enough money for Sealand we are going to try for a small island somewhere," Peter said.

Pirate Bay was undeterred by Sealand's two-billion-dollar price tag.

The amount was a "show price," Peter said. "We would love to move there and move all our servers there."

The Pirate Bay site -- www.thepiratebay.org -- was shut down by Swedish police in May 2006. The site then reopened using servers in The Netherlands before returning to Sweden in June.

The Pirate Bay provides instructions on how to share music and film files using links offered on the site and attracts some 1.5 million users throughout the world everyday.

In 2005 the Scandinavian country passed a law banning the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet without payment of royalties, in a bid to crack down on free downloading of music, films and computer games.

Filesharing in Sweden carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.