[TankGirl]

Piratbyrå (Pirate Bureau) announcement:

SITE DOWN

In the morning of 2006-05-31 the Swedish National Criminal Police showed a search warrant to Rix|Port80 personnell. The warrant was valid for all datacentres of Rix|Port80 and was directed at The Pirate Bay. The allegation was breach of copy-right law, alternatively assisting breach of copy-right law.

The police officers were allowed access to the racks where the TPB servers and other servers are hosted. All servers in the racks were clearly marked as to which sites run on each. The police took down all servers in the racks, including the non-commercial site Piratbyrån, the mission of which is to defend the rights of TPB via public debate.

According to police officers simultaneously questioning the president of Rix|Port80, the purpose of the search warrant is to take down TPB in order to secure evidence of the allegations mentioned above.

The necessity for securing technical evidence for the existance of a web-service which is fully official, the legality of which has been under public debate for years and whose principals are public persons giving regular press interviews, could not be explained. Asked for other reasoning behind the choice to take down a site, without knowing wether it is illegal or not, the officers explained that this is normal.

The TPB can receive compensation from the Swedish state in case that the upcoming legal processes show that TPB is indeed legal.

(Rix|Port80 is one of Swedens top ten IP-transit operators.)

From WiredFire:

According to first hand reports, the servers have been confiscated by Swedish police, who are looking to see if the site operators have broken any criminal laws. The raids are reported to have included removing Piratbyrån's servers, as well as The Pirate Bay’s. According to initial reports, around 50 police were involved in the raids, and three staff arrested, with two being taken into custody. In an exclusive and understandably brief initial exchange with WiredFire, Falkvinge said “(we have) “no idea what's happening in the near future, other than us fighting this”. Falkvinge went on to describe the unfolding events as like being trapped in “a circus”, adding that it was impossible to do anything with all the media attention.

In an extended exclusive interview, Falkvinge said “Oh, I know who are behind it. It's IFPI and the Swedish Antipiratbyrån (Anti-piracy bureau) both… because they (the Antipiratbyrån) told me when I asked”. During the course of the interview, Falkvinge translated the text of their press release, and said that the police were seeking a test case, “The thing about seeking a test case is just an excuse for raiding and shutting down the world's largest torrent server. The Swedish APB have been under considerable international pressure from their international counterparts to make this move”.

Having timed this to coincide with an election campaign Antipiratbyrån will have seriously aggravated a high percentage of Sweden's population in their use of police tactics to deal with what is essentially a civil dispute, and almost guaranteed PiratPartiet's entry into government this fall. The police action involved the entire ISP (PRQ), resulting in widespread disruption to a number of small businesses in addition to those servers targeted.

Whilst it does not necessarily follow that there will be any criminal convictions arising from all this, the PiratPartiet see this more as a means of harassing The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån, as well as attempting to put political pressure on them. However, they are confident that these current problems will be favourably resolved, although this will obviously result in a protracted downtime.

In the meantime, every cloud has a silver lining and Swedes are flocking to join the PiratPartiet as a result of this unprecedented action.