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Peter Sunde

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Peter Sunde
Sunde in 2009
Born
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi

(1978-09-13) 13 September 1978 (age 46)
Uddevalla, Sweden
Other namesbrokep
Occupation(s)Politician, spokesperson
Known forCo-founder of The Pirate Bay
Founder of Flattr
Co-founder of Kvittar
Co-founder of IPredator
Founder of Njalla
Political partyPirate

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (born 13 September 1978), alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine.[1] He is an equality advocate and has expressed concerns over issues of centralization of power to the European Union in his blog.[2] Sunde also participates in the Pirate Party of Finland and describes himself as a socialist.[3] In April 2017, Sunde founded Njalla, a privacy oriented domain name registrar, hosting provider and VPN provider.[4]

Personal life

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Sunde is of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry.[5][6] Before the founding of the Pirate Bay, Sunde worked for Siemens. In 2003, he became a member of Sweden's Piratbyrån (The Pirate Bureau) and a few months later Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm started The Pirate Bay with Sunde as the spokesperson.[7] He remained The Pirate Bay's spokesperson until late 2009 (three years after the ownership of the site transferred to Reservella). In August 2011, Sunde and fellow Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij launched file-sharing site BayFiles, that aimed to legally share.[8] Sunde is vegan[9] and speaks Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, English and German.

Peter Sunde ran for European Parliament in 2014 election with the Pirate Party of Finland.[10]

On 31 May 2014, just days after the EU elections and exactly eight years after the police raided The Pirate Bay servers, Sunde was arrested at a farm in Oxie, Malmö to serve his prison sentence for the Pirate Bay case.[11] He was released five months later after having served two-thirds of his eight-month sentence.[12]

The Pirate Bay trial

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Main article: The Pirate Bay trial

On 31 January 2008, The Pirate Bay operators – Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström (CEO of The Pirate Bay's former ISP) – were charged with "assisting [others in] copyright infringement".[13] 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. Each defendant was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay damages of 30 million SEK (approximately €2,740,900 or US$3,620,000), to be apportioned among the four defendants.[14] After the verdict a press conference was held where Sunde held up a handwritten IOU statement claiming that is all the damages he will pay, adding "Even if I had any money I would rather burn everything I own and not even give them the ashes. They could have the job of picking them up. That's how much I hate the media industry."[15]

The defendants' lawyers appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal together with a request for a retrial in the district court claiming bias on the part of judge Tomas Norström.[16] The district court ruled there was no bias and denied the request for a retrial. On appeal, the jail sentences were reduced, but the damages increased. The supreme court of Sweden subsequently refused to hear any further appeal. The European Court of Human Rights also later rejected an appeal.[17]

Segments of an interview with Sunde talking about copyright, the Internet, and culture are featured in the 2007 documentary Steal This Film and 2013 documentary TPB AFK.

Flattr

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Main article: Flattr

Flattr was a micropayments system started by Sunde and Linus Olsson, which enabled viewers of websites to make small donations to the developer by clicking a "Flattr this" button. At the time of the projects's announcement in February 2010, Sunde explained that "the money you pay each month will be spread evenly among the buttons you click in a month. We want to encourage people to share money as well as content."[18] Flattr itself took a 10% administration fee.[18]

After WikiLeaks' initial publication of the U.S. Diplomatic Cables, companies including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Moneybookers blocked donations and money transfers to the site. Flattr, however, continued allowing donations to WikiLeaks.[19] Sunde commented "We [Flattr] think their work is exactly what is needed and if we can help just a little bit, we will."[20]

On 5 April 2017, Adblock Plus publisher Eyeo GmbH announced that it had acquired Flattr for an undisclosed amount.[21]

Hemlis

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On 9 July 2013, Peter Sunde, together with Leif Högberg and Linus Olsson, announced a fundraising campaign for Hemlis.[22] Their goal was to launch a mass market messenger that was secure and private.[23]

On 22 April 2015, the Hemlis team announced that they were discontinuing the development of the Hemlis messaging platform.[24]

Kopimashin

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On 14 December 2015, Sunde released a video[25] on his Vimeo account of a device called "Kopimashin", a machine made with a Raspberry Pi running a Python routine to produce 100 copies per second of Gnarls Barkley's single "Crazy", redirecting the copies to /dev/null (where the data is discarded), surpassing eight million copies per day.

The following day, Sunde published the full description of the device and project at Konsthack as the first art project of the site's portfolio.[26]

The machine has an LCD screen (as shown in the video) that calculates a running tally of the damages it has supposedly inflicted upon the record industry through its use, accordingly to what RIAA claims on their website.[27] If RIAA's claims were valid, it also meant that the record industry would soon become bankrupt as a result of Kopimashin,[28] a claim the project seeks to disprove with a physical example.

A few days later, Sunde told news site TorrentFreak that Kopimashin was created to "show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy", and that "putting a price to a copy is futile."[29]

A similar project called "Strata Kazika" was already launched by Polish activists in 2012.[30][31]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Thorkildsen, Joakim (31 January 2008). "Norske Peter tiltalt i The Pirate Bay-saken". Dagbladet (in Norwegian). Archived from the original on 15 May 2016. Retrieved 29 June 2008.
  2. ^ "EUP 2014 – Copy me happy". blog.brokep.com. Archived from the original on 21 May 2018. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  3. ^ Mollen, Joost (11 December 2015). "Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde: I have given up". Motherboard. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
  4. ^ "Pirate Bay Founder Launches Anonymous Domain Registration Service – TorrentFreak". TorrentFreak. 19 April 2017. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
  5. ^ Kuprijanko, Alexander (7 February 2009). "Jag känner inte att jag gör något fel". Sydsvenskan (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 10 April 2009.
  6. ^ Waters, Darren (16 April 2009). "Countdown to Pirate Bay verdict". BBC. Archived from the original on 30 May 2023. Retrieved 20 April 2009.
  7. ^ "Pirate Bay's Founding Group 'Piratbyrån' Disbands". TorrentFreak. 23 June 2010. Archived from the original on 28 June 2010. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  8. ^ "Pirate Bay Founders Launch "Legal" File-Sharing Site". Tomsguide.com. 31 August 2011. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  9. ^ "Pirate Bay Crew Chums Up to Foes Over Lunch". WIRED. 18 February 2009. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  10. ^ Van der Sar, Ernesto (14 May 2013). "Pirate Bay Co-Founder to Run For European Parliament". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  11. ^ Baker, Jennifer (31 May 2014). "The Pirate Bay Spokesperson Peter Sunde Arrested in Sweden". Revolution News. Archived from the original on 23 April 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  12. ^ Farivar, Cyrus (10 November 2014). "Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde freed after 5 months in prison". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  13. ^ Kravets, David. "Pirate Bay Future Uncertain After Operators Busted". Wired. Archived from the original on 20 April 2009. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  14. ^ "The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict – Guilty – TorrentFreak". 17 April 2009. Archived from the original on 3 February 2021. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  15. ^ Kiss, Jemima (17 April 2009). "Pirate Bay defendant: we can't and won't pay". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
  16. ^ "Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial". The Local. 23 April 2009. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2009.
  17. ^ "The European Court of Human Rights rejects Pirate Bay file-sharing appeal" Archived 14 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^ a b "Pirate boss to make the web pay". BBC News. 12 February 2010. Archived from the original on 8 March 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  19. ^ Jackson, Nicholas (8 December 2010). "Small Startup Keeps Cash Flowing to WikiLeaks". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  20. ^ "Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi : Kevin Trudeau Show". Ktradionetwork.com. 23 August 2010. Archived from the original on 30 March 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  21. ^ Ha, Anthony (5 April 2017). "The company behind Adblock Plus is acquiring micropayment service Flattr". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 22 April 2017.
  22. ^ "Hello world! We are fundraising!". Hemlis blog. Archived from the original on 22 April 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  23. ^ "Pirate Bay Founder to Launch NSA-proof Messenger App – TorrentFreak". 10 July 2013. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  24. ^ "Sometimes you understand". Hemlis blog. Archived from the original on 22 April 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  25. ^ "KH000//Kopimashin". 14 December 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  26. ^ "Konsthack > Portfolio > KH000 // Kopimashin". 15 December 2015. Archived from the original on 25 December 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  27. ^ "RIAA > Piracy Online > Who Music Theft Hurts". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  28. ^ "RIAA > Piracy Online > Scope of the Problem". Recording Industry Association of America. Archived from the original on 4 December 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  29. ^ "Pirate Bay Founder Builds the Ultimate Piracy Machine". 19 December 2015. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  30. ^ S.A, Wirtualna Polska Media (28 August 2012). "Strata Kazika, czyli jak ukraść 86 milionów złotych". tech.wp.pl (in Polish). Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  31. ^ "Twórca "Straty Kazika": Dość szantażu moralnego w przemyśle muzycznym, piractwo to zdrowa kultura". naTemat.pl (in Polish). Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
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