Copyright cops take down ISP in ‘piracy’ hunt

A POLICE RAID on the Swedish internet service provider (ISP) PRQ has taken down dozens of websites, apparently in the hunt for copyright infringers.

Coppers raided PRQ yesterday, according to its owner Mikael Viborg, who spoke to the Swedish newspaper Nyheter24.

Viborg said that when the cops arrived the servers were already down, due to a technical fault, adding that when they recovered the police were able to start peering into them.

It is not known exactly what websites the cops were after, but PRQ is associated with The Pirate Bay.

Helena Ekstrand from the local Prosecutor General's Office told Nyheter24 that PRQ hosted some rather dubious material, and not just potentially 'pirated' media.

A report at Torrentfreak says that PRQ was hosting a range of websites including Torrenthound, RLSLOG.net, and Hahasport.com, but not The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay was unavailable around the same time. Although it has not said anything through its usual channels, like its Twitter account, a PB spokesman told Torrentfreak that its outage was due to a power failure.

Update
Forty eight hours after it went offline The Pirate Bay is now back up.

According to a report at Torrentfreak it was an electrical problem that took down the magnet website, and the delay was caused by the search for a needed part. That part was found and the website is back online. µ