Gottfrid Svartholm

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Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid portrait.jpg
Born Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg
(1984-10-17) 17 October 1984 (age 28)
Other names anakata
Known for Co-founding The Pirate Bay

Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (born 17 October 1984), alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the former co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde.

Parts of an interview with Svartholm commenting on the May 2006 police raid of The Pirate Bay are featured in Good Copy Bad Copy and Steal This Film. He also appears in the 2013 documentary TPB AFK.

Contents

Americas Dumbest Soldiers and meeting Fredrik Neij [edit]

Svartholm Warg started the website Americas Dumbest Soldiers which listed deceased US soldiers in the Iraq War and asked users of the site to rate how "dumb" the soldiers were based on how they died. Fredrik Neij provided Svartholm Warg's site Internet access via a Swedish provider and British Telecom. According to Neij, someone at the US State Department contacted the head of British Telecom, who in turn contacted the head of the Swedish provider, asking them to remove the site. Invoking freedom of speech and parody, they questioned the request, but eventually removed the site.[1]

The Pirate Bay [edit]

[icon] This section requires expansion. (February 2013)

Svartholm Warg co-founded The Pirate Bay. He also created the tracker software Hypercube (open source software under no specific license)[2] which was used to run The Pirate Bay web site and tracker.

Legal issues [edit]

See also: The Pirate Bay Trial

On 31 January 2008, The Pirate Bay operators — Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström (CEO of The Pirate Bay's former ISP) — were charged with "promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws".[3] The trial began on 16 February 2009. On 17 April 2009, Sunde and his co-defendants were found to be guilty of "assisting in making copyright content available" in the Stockholm district court (tingsrätten). Each defendant was sentenced to one year in prison and they were ordered to pay damages of 30 million SEK (approximately €3,390,317 or US$4,222,980), to be apportioned among the four defendants.[4] The defendants lawyers have appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal together with a request for a retrial in the district court because of the recent suspicion of bias by judge Tomas Norström.[5] Under Swedish law, the verdict is not lawful until all appeals have been processed.[6]

In April 2009, Svartholm was the subject of an investigation by Swedish prosecutors looking into his role in The Student Bay, a file sharing site specializing in academic texts. Svartholm claimed he had no knowledge of the site. The site was reported by the Swedish Association for Educational Writers in December 2008 claiming it violated copyright law.[7]

In October 2009, Stockholm District Court ordered that Svartholm be banned from operating the Pirate Bay, despite the facts that he was no longer living in Sweden, and the Pirate Bay was no longer located there.[8]

In October 2011, a Swedish court ordered that Svartholm be jailed for not attending a court appearance.[citation needed]

Arrest in Cambodia [edit]

On 30 August 2012, at the request of Swedish authorities, Svartholm was arrested by Cambodian police in the capital Phnom Penh,[9] where he had been living for several years.[10] Cambodia has no extradition treaty with Sweden, but Cambodian police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told the AFP news agency "we'll look into our laws and see how we can handle this case". Subsequently, Cambodian police were reported stating that the Swedish government had requested that Gottfrid be deported in connection with "a crime related to information technology".[11]

Torrentfreak speculated[12] that Svartholm's arrest may have been connected to a 400 million kronor (at the time, approximately US$59M) two-year "democratic development, human rights, education, and climate change" grant from the Swedish government. The grant was announced on 05 September, 2012.[13]

Gottfrid has since been deported back to Sweden where he is currently serving his jail term in the Mariefred prison in Mariefred.[14] He has also been investigated for two alleged instances of hacking, including breaking into the Swedish tax office between 2010 and April 2012,[15] and is also suspected of serious fraud. As of January 2013, no charges had been filed for these matters.[16]

References [edit]

  1. ^ ""TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard]". TPB AFK. 8 February 2013. Retrieved 13 February 2013. 
  2. ^ "Hypercube Tracker by Anakata". ThePirateBay.org. 
  3. ^ "Pirate Bay Future Uncertain After Operators Busted". Wired.com. 31 January 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  4. ^ "The Pirate Bay Trial: Official Verdict – Guilty". TorrentFreak. 17 April 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  5. ^ "Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial". The Local (Sweden). 23 April 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  6. ^ Sullivan, Tom (17 April 2009). "‘Pirate Bay’ founders convicted by Swedish court". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  7. ^ "Pirate Bay operator faces new probe". The Local (Sweden). 20 April 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2012. 
  8. ^ "Pirate Bay Founders Banned From Running The Site". TorrentFreak. 29 October 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2012. 
  9. ^ "Pirate Bay co-founder Warg arrested in Cambodia". BBC News. 2 September 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  10. ^ "Pirate Bay Founder Arrested in Cambodia". TorrentFreak. 1 September 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2012. 
  11. ^ "Pirate Bay Founder will be deported Cambodian authorities confirm". 4 August 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
  12. ^ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrest-followed-by-59m-swedish-aid-package-for-cambodia-120905/
  13. ^ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/05/c_131829212.htm
  14. ^ "Snapshot of TPB". grez868. 24 December 2012. Retrieved 24 December 2012. 
  15. ^ "Svartholm Warg to be charged within a month". 28 January 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2013. 
  16. ^ "Pirate Bay founder released from solitary confinement". TorrentFreak. 9 December 2012. Retrieved 21 February 2013. 
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