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Figures from Net monitoring service Alexa.com show a huge peak in traffic to the site, which relocated to the Netherlands following the police action, which was prompted by the US movie industry.

The seizures prompted demonstrations in Sweden and garnered worldwide press coverage.

The Swedish government has responded by suggesting that it may add a levy to broadband prices which will

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be used to 'compensate music and film companies for the downloading of their work, while legalising the downloading of copyright-protected material', according to The Local, an English language Swedish news site.

Justice minister Thomas Bodström is seeking the agreement of political opponents, who voted against a previous proposal to introduce a levy.

Last year Sweden made file sharing illegal, but is now prepared to scrap that law. Bodström still supports the legislation, which he claims is responsible for creating a legal downloads market, but is prepared to discuss a revision.

'The most important thing for me is that authors and artists get paid and I will never retreat from that,' he said.

He added that he has reservations about imposing a levy: 'first, it would be unfair on those who have subscribed to broadband and don't want to download, secondly because it would mean that the government was setting the price for goods, which I don't think we should do, whether those goods are in a shop or on the Net.'