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New Charges for Co-Founder of The Biggest File-Sharing Website
A Swedish computer specialist Gottfrid Svatholm Warg is detained on copyright violations regarding his file-sharing website Pirate Bay, he is also accused of hacking into the servers of a company that supplies IT services for some of Sweden’s tax services and making off with records belonging to thousands of people.
Pirate Bay has become the fastest source for downloading latest Hollywood blockbuster movies without giving out credit card details, the process only takes 2 hours without registration or charge. Warg, former member of anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån proudly presents his piracy beliefs on his website with its logo depicting a pirate ship firing cannon balls at the Hollywood sign.
In the early stages of development, the site received donations from various Swedish celebrities, but is now financed through advertisements. In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$169,000) per year from advertisements.
No other legal case involving files-haring and copyright violations has caused that much media buzz, his escape to Cambodia and run-ins with Swedish authorities awarded him star status amongst his website users and boosted the site’s visitor numbers. The galaxy’s most resilient bittorrent site, as it states on the website, is currently ranked as the 80th most visited website in the world.
It is estimated that over the existence of Pirate Bay there’s been roughly million illegal downloads, for about 382 trillion dollars worth, which is 46 times more dollars than actually exists on Earth.
Warg and his co-founder Fredrik Neij became the whipping boys for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) – among other media companies – for copyright violations.
Yet setting up a massive website causing creative industry damage beyond imagination is not what he’s charged for, astonishing as it may sound, the court found Warg and fellow Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij guilty of making 33 copyright-protected files available for downloading on Piratebay.org and sent them to one year behind bars. Altogether 5,4 million dollars has been awarded to musicians and labels for copyright violations.
Warg escaped to Cambodia after receiving his sentencing three years ago, a warrant for his arrest has remained outstanding ever since. He was arrested earlier this month, but he denies any other allegations put on him. Rumors have spread in the bittorrent community that a large amount of aid money given to Cambodia has something to do with extraditing him to Swedish authorities who otherwise wouldn’t have any legal ground to arrest him.
He’s risen to star status amongst the internet obsessed youth in Sweden, in their words Pirate Bay is just a device for sharing their own files and closing the website would be a violation of their human rights.
He denies any allegations regarding hacking, according to him there are no evidence to base them on. Warg has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as plaintiff and as defendant, but the website is still up and running. Currently the website is operating under Swedish .se domain extension.
