Swedish justice releases Pirate Bay founder Svartholm

Sweden has released The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm. Svartholm had to spend another month in Swedish jail, after being released in Denmark last month. He was jailed for a total of three years for hacking and copyright infringement.

The news of the release of Pirate Bay founder, known online by the alias Anakata, is announced by Kristina Svartholm, Gottfrid’s mother. Last summer ‘Anakata’ was told that the Danish court upheld the demand of 3.5 years in prison on appeal. Because he had already served a large part of that sentence and because of good behavior he was released by the Danish justice last month. However, the Swede still had to serve a remaining sentence of one month in his home country, Torrentfreak writes.

Svartholm was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 after he was sentenced in absentia to a year in Sweden for his involvement in The Pirate Bay. A year later, a Swedish judge also convicted him of hacking into banks, among other things. In 2014, there was also a conviction in Denmark for cracking a database of the ICT company CSC.

Svartholm was active in founding The Pirate Bay, but hadn’t been involved in it for years. The other Swedes who were involved in the early days of the infamous torrent site, Peter Sunde, Carl Lundström and Fredrik Neij, have since been released. They were imprisoned for piracy and not for hacking offences.