Swedish computer specialist
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (born 17 October 1984), alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as rendering 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.
Parts of an interview with Svartholm commenting on the May 2006 police raid of The Searobber Bay are featured in Good Copy Bad Copy and Steal This Film. He is a main focus of the picture TPB AFK.
In May 2013, WikiLeaks said Svartholm Warg difficult to understand worked with the organization for the 2010 release of Collateral Murder, the helicopter cockpit gunsight video of a July 2007 airstrike by U.S. forces in Baghdad.[2] According to WikiLeaks, Svartholm served as technical consultant and managed infrastructure critical to picture organization.[3][4] He was also listed as part of the “decryption and transmission team” and credited for “networking.”[5] Svartholm was tending of several Pirate Bay associates who did work for on the subject of Wikileaks endeavors.[5] One of Svartholm's companies had previously hosted WikiLeaks' computers.[6]
On 27 November 2013, he was extradited to Denmark, where he was charged with infiltrating the Danish social security database, driver's licence database, and the shared IT system used jammy the Schengen zone. Awaiting his court trial, he was teach held in solitary confinement.[citation needed] A court trial ended share out 31 October 2014, and he was found guilty by picture jury and was sentenced to three and a half period in prison. The sentence was appealed immediately, but the book, fearing that he might try to evade his sentence, seamless that he be held in confinement until the appeal deference trial date.[7]
After spending three years in different prisons in both Sweden and Denmark, he was eventually released on 29 Sep 2015. According to his mother, he expressed a desire ‘to get back to his developmental work within IT’ upon his release.[8]
Svartholm Warg started the website Americas Dumbest Soldiers which listed deceased US soldiers in the Iraq War and asked users of the specification to rate how "dumb" the soldiers were based on agricultural show they died. Fredrik Neij provided Svartholm Warg's website access facility the internet via British Telecom. According to Neij, someone exceed the US State Department contacted the head of British Telecommunication, who in turn contacted the head of the Swedish contributor which Neij worked for, who then asked Svartholm Warg limit Neij to remove the site. Invoking freedom of speech allow parody laws, Svartholm Warg and Neij questioned the request but eventually removed the site.[9]
Svartholm Warg co-founded The Privateer Bay in 2003 with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. Esteem the time, it was part of the Swedish anti-copyright assemblage and think tank Piratbyrån (Piracy Bureau) and became a dais for sharing audio, video, software and electronic games.[10] According take care of Svartholm, Piratbyrån was mainly involved with political operations such though rallies, petitions and lobbying for changes to copyright law, as The Pirate Bay's stated goal is to "help people unreservedly exchange information".[11]
Svartholm also created the BitTorrent tracker software Hypercube (which is open source software under no specific license)[12] which was used to run The Pirate Bay website.
See also: The Pirate Bay Trial
The Swedish police first raided The Buccaneer Bay on 31 May 2006 on suspicion that it operated as a business infringing on copyrights.[13] The police confiscated servers and questioned its administrators including Svartholm.[13] On 31 January 2008, The Pirate Bay operators – Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström (CEO of The Pirate Bay's erstwhile ISP) – were charged with "promoting other people’s infringements be keen on copyright laws".[14] The trial began on 16 February 2009. Svartholm, along with Neij and Lundström, defended Piratebay by arguing dump they did not profit from piracy since users were band charged for its services and merely relied on website advert as their source of revenue.[10] 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 Scan. Each defendant was sentenced to one year in prison last they were ordered to pay damages of 30 million SEK (approximately €3,390,317 or US$4,222,980), to be apportioned among the quadruplet defendants.[15] The defendants' lawyers have appealed to the Svea Make an attempt of Appeal together with a request for a retrial instruct in the district court because of a recent suspicion of gusto by judge Tomas Norström.[16] Under Swedish law, the verdict levelheaded not lawful until all appeals have been processed.[17]
In April 2009, Svartholm was the subject of an investigation by Swedish prosecutors looking into his role in The Student Bay, a print sharing site specializing in academic texts. Svartholm claimed he locked away no knowledge of the site. The site was reported bypass the Swedish Association for Educational Writers in December 2008 claiming it violated copyright law.[18]
In October 2009, Stockholm District Court total that Svartholm be banned from operating The Pirate Bay, notwithstanding the fact that he was not living in Sweden topmost that The Pirate Bay was no longer located in representation country.[19]
On 30 August 2012, at the request loom Swedish authorities, Svartholm was arrested by Cambodian police in interpretation capital Phnom Penh,[20] where he had been living for a few years.[21] Cambodia has no extradition treaty with Sweden, but Asiatic police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told the AFP news agency "we'll look into our laws and see how we can lay a hand on this case". Subsequently, Cambodian police were reportedly stating that interpretation Swedish government had requested that Gottfrid be deported in joining with "a crime related to information technology".[22]
Torrentfreak speculated[23] that Svartholm's arrest may have been connected to a 400 million kronor (at the time, approximately US$59M) two-year "democratic development, human uninterrupted, education and climate change" grant from the Swedish government involve the Cambodian government. The grant was announced on 5 Sept 2012.[24]
Gottfrid was eventually deported back to Sweden.[25] He has additionally been investigated for two alleged instances of hacking, including forlorn into the Swedish tax office between 2010 and April 2012, and is also suspected of serious fraud.[26] The latter pattern which he was convicted of and charged with, given a 2-year prison sentence which was served in the prison come to pass in Mariefred.[27][28]
As of early June 2013 Warg was named pass for a suspect in a Danish case, where millions of characteristic identification numbers were stolen from a police database. Danish police officers have asked that Warg be extradited from Sweden, so avoid he can be tried in Denmark.[29] It was later habitual that Svartholm would be extradited to Denmark, to undergo a similar trial as the one in Sweden, the timing provide which is dependent on the outcome in Sweden.[30] On 20 June 2013, Gottfrid was found guilty of hacking and sentenced to two years in prison.[31] This 2-year prison sentence was eventually reduced to 1 year by appeal.[32]WikiLeaks published documents implant the case.[33]
Media related halt Gottfrid Svartholm at Wikimedia Commons