Gottfrid Svartholm

Early Life and Background

Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was born on 17 October 1984 in Sweden. He operates under the alias anakata online. An early indicator of his provocative approach to internet publishing was a website he created called Americas Dumbest Soldiers, which listed deceased U.S. soldiers from the Iraq War and invited users to rate them. The site attracted attention from the U.S. State Department, which reportedly contacted British Telecom, eventually leading to a request that Svartholm and Fredrik Neij — who had provided the site's internet access — take it down. Invoking freedom of speech and parody laws, the two initially questioned the request before ultimately complying.

The Pirate Bay

Svartholm co-founded The Pirate Bay in 2003 with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. The site originated within Piratbyrån, a Swedish anti-copyright group and think tank, and grew into one of the world's most prominent platforms for sharing audio, video, software, and electronic games via BitTorrent. Svartholm described Piratbyrån as focused on political activities such as rallies, petitions, and lobbying for copyright law reform, while The Pirate Bay's stated goal was to help people freely exchange information. He also developed Hypercube, an open-source BitTorrent tracker software used to operate the site.

Svartholm also co-owned PRQ, a Swedish web hosting company that became known for its permissive hosting policies.

Legal Issues: The Pirate Bay Trial

Swedish police first raided The Pirate Bay on 31 May 2006, confiscating servers and questioning administrators including Svartholm. On 31 January 2008, Svartholm, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundström were charged with promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws. The trial began on 16 February 2009. Svartholm and his co-defendants argued that they did not profit from piracy, as users were not charged for the service and the site relied on advertising revenue. On 17 April 2009, all four defendants were found guilty of assisting in making copyright content available by the Stockholm District Court. Each was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered collectively to pay damages of 30 million SEK. The verdict was appealed, and a separate investigation into Svartholm's alleged involvement with The Student Bay, a file-sharing site for academic texts, was also opened in April 2009, though Svartholm denied any knowledge of that site.

WikiLeaks Association

In May 2013, WikiLeaks stated that Svartholm had worked with the organization in connection with the 2010 release of the Collateral Murder video — cockpit gunsight footage of a July 2007 U.S. airstrike in Baghdad. WikiLeaks described Svartholm as having served as a technical consultant who managed critical infrastructure for the organization, and credited him as part of the decryption and transmission team for networking work. One of Svartholm's companies had previously hosted WikiLeaks' computers.

Arrest in Cambodia and Swedish Conviction

On 30 August 2012, Svartholm was arrested by Cambodian police in Phnom Penh, where he had been living for several years, at the request of Swedish authorities. Despite Cambodia having no extradition treaty with Sweden, he was eventually deported back to Sweden. He faced investigation for alleged hacking of the Swedish tax office between 2010 and April 2012, as well as serious fraud charges. He was convicted of the fraud charge and sentenced to two years in prison, served at a facility in Mariefred.

Danish Conviction

In June 2013, Svartholm was named as a suspect in a Danish case involving the theft of millions of personal identification numbers from a police database. On 20 June 2013, he was found guilty of hacking and sentenced to two years in prison in Sweden; that sentence was later reduced to one year on appeal. On 27 November 2013, he was extradited to Denmark, where he faced charges of infiltrating the Danish social security database, driver's license database, and the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. He was held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial. On 31 October 2014, a jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. After spending three years in prisons in both Sweden and Denmark, he was released on 29 September 2015.

Documentary Appearances

Svartholm's commentary on the May 2006 police raid of The Pirate Bay is featured in the documentaries Good Copy Bad Copy and Steal This Film. He is a central figure in TPB AFK, a documentary focused on The Pirate Bay and its founders.