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1 Jun, 2014 04:30

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde arrested in Sweden

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde arrested in Sweden

The co-founder of the file-sharing website Pirate Bay was arrested in southern Sweden after being on the run for nearly two years. Peter Sunde was facing an outstanding sentence of eight months in prison and a large fine for copyright violations.

Sunde was one of the four co-founders of the website and has been wanted by Interpol since being sentenced in 2012.

"We have been looking for him since 2012," Reuters quoted spokeswoman at the Swedish National Police Board Carolina Ekeus as saying. "He was given eight months in jail so he has to serve his sentence."

The arrest was made on Saturday in the southern Swedish county of Skane. No further details were provided.

Originally, the authorities sentenced all four individuals connected to Pirate Bay to a year in prison and a 32 million crowns ($4.8 million) fine. But, following an appeal in 2010 the sentences were reduced by different amounts and the fine was increased to 46 million Swedish crowns ($6.9 million).

There are reports that Sunde could have been living in Germany for the past couple of years, according to Swedish media.

Сo-founder of The Pirate Bay filesharing website, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (AFP Photo/Bertil Ericson)

In September 2012, another co-founder of Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, alias Anakata, was arrested in Cambodia. Anakata was also wanted by Sweden on copyright infringement charges after failing to report for a yearlong prison sentence.

Authorities arrested Anakata in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in an apartment above The Cadillac Bar and Grill, a popular expat hangout. The Swedish government issued an international arrest warrant for him in January, after he failed to appear for the start of his jail term.

Warg was extradited to Denmark in November 2013, on a different matter and charged with infiltrating the Danish social security database, driver’s license database, and the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. He is now being held in solitary confinement, and could be sentenced to a maximum of 6 years in prison if found guilty.

The Pirate Bay was founded in 2003. Hailed by some as one of the world’s largest free file-sharing websites, and condemned by entertainment industry giants as the largest facilitator of illegal downloading, The Pirate Bay has become a focal point for the heated controversy surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing.

Although the site has been shut down on several occasions, it has continued to pop up time and again around the world changing its domain to avoid shutdown.

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