[Infowarrior] - Pirate Bay down, police raids across Europe

[Richard Forno]

Pirate Bay down, police raids across Europe

Co-ordinated swoop in 14 countries

07 September, 2010

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/9/7/pirate-bay-down-police-swoop-across-europe/

UPDATE, 15:11 GMT: Site currently unavailable again.

UPDATE, 14:02 GMT: Pirate Bay site now back online in UK, though torrent trackers appear not to be working. Further news as soon as it's available.

Torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is currently unavailable as reports come in of co-ordinated police raids against file sharers across Europe.

Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning.

According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden.

Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized.

Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad confirmed to Swedish newspaper Expressen that WikiLeaks was not involved in the current action.

"At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here," PRQ director Mikael Viberg said. "They were interested in who was using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards.

"We have no records of our clients but we're handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it's rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable."

It appears that a number of other locations in Sweden have been the subject of police action, including Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå university and Eskilstuna.

Four individuals are said to be being questioned on suspicion of breaching copyright law. Servers and computers are reported to have been seized.

Simultaneous raids are also said to have been carried out in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The action, targeting the so-called 'Warez Scene', is said to have been in planning for two years, and is believed to have taken place at the request of Belgian authorities.

We'll keep you updated as further details emerge.