Gottfrid Svartholm
Gottfrid Svartholm | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg 17 October 1984 |
| 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. He has also created the tracker software Hypercube (open source software under no specific license)[1] which was used to run The Pirate Bay web site and tracker.
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.
Legal issues
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".[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] Under Swedish law, the verdict is not lawful until all appeals have been processed.[5]
As of 20 April 2009, Svartholm is 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 claims 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.[6]
In October 2009, Stockholm District Court ordered that Svartholm is 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.[7]
In October 2011, a Swedish court ordered that Svartholm be jailed for not attending a court appearance.[citation needed]
Arrest in Cambodia
On 30 August 2012, at the request of Swedish authorities, Svartholm was arrested by Cambodian police in the capital Phnom Penh,[8] where he had been living for several years.[9] 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".[10]
Gottfrid has since been deported back to Sweden where he is currently serving his jail term in the Prison of Mariefred.[11]
Upon arrival back to Sweden he was immediately arrested for suspicion of hacking Logica, a Swedish IT company that works with the local tax authorities. He was kept in solitary for up to 23 hours a day until December 7, 2012 while serving his one year sentence. The prosecution kept extending custody and later implicated him in a second hacking case along with accusations of four instances of serious fraud and four attempted frauds. Again, no official charges were filed. [12]
References
- ^ The Pirate Bay.org
- ^ "Pirate Bay Future Uncertain After Operators Busted"
- ^ "The Pirate Bay Trial: Official Verdict – Guilty"
- ^ "Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial". The Local (Sweden). 23 April 2009.
- ^ Sullivan, Tom (17 April 2009). "'Pirate Bay' founders convicted by Swedish court". The Christian Science Monitor.
- ^ "Pirate Bay operator faces new probe". The Local (Sweden). Retrieved 3 February 2012.
- ^ "Pirate Bay Founders Banned From Running The Site". TorrentFreak. 29 October 2009. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19457334
- ^ "Pirate Bay Founder Arrested in Cambodia". TorrentFreak. 1 September 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
- ^ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-will-be-deported-cambodian-authorities-confirm-120804/
- ^ "Snapshot of TPB Dated December 24, 2012". grez868. Retrieved 24 December 2012.
- ^ http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-released-from-solitary-confinement-121209/
