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| The Pirate Bay site founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde arriving for their trial at Stockholm city court Feb. 16, 2009. They were found guilty of breaking Swedish copyright law by helping Internet users worldwide download protected music, movies and computer games. (Bertil Ericson/AFP/Getty Images) |
September 2, 2012
By Jack Phillips
Epoch Times Staff
One of the founders of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish torrent website, was arrested by Cambodian authorities at the behest of Sweden, Cambodian police said on Sunday.
A Swedish court gave Gottfrid Svartholm Warg a year-long prison sentence in 2009 for promoting copyright infringement through The Pirate Bay filesharing site. He was also told to pay several million dollars in damages.
“His arrest was made at the request of the Swedish government for a crime related to information technology,” Kirth Chantharith, the Cambodian national police spokesperson, told AFP. He was arrested on Thursday in Phnom Penh, where he has resided for the past several years.
“We don’t have an extradition treaty with Sweden but we’ll look into our laws and see how we can handle this case,” the spokesperson added.
The Pirate Bay, currently ranked the 81st most-visited website in the world according to Alexa, was set up in 2003 to share large files including movies, games, music albums, and other materials, but that triggered lawsuits from the Motion Picture Association of America and other organizations. The website does not actually host copyrighted content on its site but provides links to torrent files that are shared by individuals.
In 2006, the site’s servers were raided and taken away by Swedish authorities, resulting in the arrest of Svartholm and the site’s other founders, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. All were released later that day.
Svartholm later left the country and was deemed an international criminal because he did not show up for his court date.
His former lawyer, Ola Salomonsson, believes the arrest is related to The Pirate Bay’s case, according to the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
“I do not know much more than that he has been arrested,” Salomonsson told the paper.
1 comment:
The Swedish government requested to Cambodian government to arrest one of the founders of the Pirate Bay in exchange to arrest a fugitive Pang Sokheoun, nickname: Kolbot and name in facebook is Khmer Sovannaphumi back to Cambodia.
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