SwePiracy: Swedish File-Sharing Service Shut Down

Swepiracy was a large BitTorrent tracker site, launched back in 2006. In Sweden, it ranked as one of the most popular file-sharing services for the last several years. The site has been recently raided and brought down as a result of a coordinated operation of authorities from both Sweden and the Netherlands.

Last week, the police of eastern Sweden have raided the house of a 20-year-old guy suspected of operating the online service in question. At the same time, the Netherlands’ authorities have seized Swepiracy’s servers located in that country. Swedish anti-piracy bureau Antipiratbyran announced that Swepiracy was trying to protect its operations by moving servers abroad, to the Netherlands. However, Swedish and Dutch police have coordinated their efforts and carried out raids in order to secure evidence of copyright violation.

Besides, the anti-piracy outfit claimed that Swepiracy was known as one of the largest promoters of copyright violation content and before the start of this operation it had been warned to cease its unauthorized operations. Instead, the site’s operator tried to protect himself by moving the servers of the tracker into the Netherlands. Unfortunately, this didn’t help.

Prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson has made a statement during the interview to the local newspaper. He explained that the young man was suspected of operating Swepiracy BitTorrent tracker. Rasmusson also pointed out that the founder of the website has made plenty of money by charging the tracker’s users in exchange to providing them access to illegal films. The police evaluated the amount he has earned equal to $150,000.

After answering a number of questions to the police, the guy behind the BitTorrent tracker was released. However, he still remains under criminal suspicion of copyright violation. The police explained to the press that though the young man admitted that he had run the operations, he didn’t believe doing so had been a criminal act.

Swepiracy wasn’t the first and only service targeted by Antipiratbyran: for example, SceneAccess, Theinternationals and Sparvar were also scoped by the anti-piracy outfit, which promises to take actions against them in the nearest future. Seems like today is a hard time for torrent trackers in Sweden…