While most people might presume that seclusion, boredom and a bland diet are an inevitable outcome of incarceration, other unexpected events are perhaps the ones that carry the most impact with the public. This week presented one such occasion.

After being seriously ill for some time, Peter’s father sadly passed away but due to decisions at his high-security prison, Peter was warned he would be attending the funeral in handcuffs. The sad news, reported by Peter’s brother Mats Kolmisoppi, struck a chord with thousands of supporters this week, even a group of Hollywood workers.

With the funeral now having taken place, Mats has taken time out to update Peter’s supporters on how things went. For once, the news is good.

“Many thanks for all the support and attention for my brother and my family’s situation,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Yesterday we buried our father. A nice and quiet affair. Peter was eligible to carry the coffin and attend the memorial service. The guards were respectful and kept in the background,” Mats reports.

“That does not change the fact that he spent the last week living with the threat that handcuffs could be put to use. But we are thankful that he did not have to endure such humiliation.”

Why the prison system chose to treat Peter and his family with compassion isn’t clear – thus far all comment on his case has been declined. But Mats is thankful for those who offered public support and any effect that had on the decision.

“Maybe Peter did not have to [appear handcuffed] because of all the attention surrounding the case that you helped to create. Me, my brother and my family are deeply grateful. All credit to you,” he wrote.

But while Peter’s week has turned out better than expected, Mats says he hopes the spotlight will remain focused on a flawed system.

“I hope for change, that institutions should be required to answer, that a regulator with real powers to change the system is set up. And that transparency will continue to increase,” he concludes.

Peter Sunde has less than 50 days left of his sentence for Pirate Bay-related copyright infringement offenses.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Despite being accused of non-violent crimes, Peter is being held in a high-security unit and without concern for his dietary needs. As a result he’s literally wasting away.

Following the tragic death of his father who recently succumbed to a long-standing set of illnesses, the week delivered yet more bad news. Although the prison would allow him to attend the funeral, Peter was told he could expect to carry his father’s coffin wearing handcuffs.

Understandably the news provoked much outrage. Why would a non-violent and now-frail man with with just a few days left on his sentence try to escape from not one but two prison guards? As that improbable situation was discussed among supporters online, a much less traditional support group were asking the same questions.

Hollywood director Lexi Alexander has been a vocal supporter of Peter and earlier this year broke with the usual Tinseltown position by calling for his release.

While her outspoken approach is uncharacteristic of a Hollywood worker, it may come as a surprise that she is definitely not on her own. During recent weeks the director and actress, who has several movies under her belt, called for other like-minded individuals in Hollywood to make themselves known.

The result was the publication a few minutes ago of a video dedicated to the uncuffing, release and support of Peter Sunde.

“We created this video in solidarity with Peter as he attends his father’s funeral today,” Alexander told TorrentFreak.

“Originally I had planned to do this over the next few weeks, but when I heard about Peter’s father’s death yesterday, we scrambled and got it together within a few hours.”

While a few of the people in the video have understandably chosen to remain anonymous, others have been very happy to show their faces. With the famous Hollywood sign in the background, first up, Julie Bush.

“Julie Bush was pro-piracy before I even knew what file-sharing meant,” Alexander told TF. “She used to be a writer on the show Sons of Anarchy and now she’s writing a major property for Universal Studios: Robert Ludlum’s The Sigma Protocol.”

Bush has written on a number of occasions about Hollywood’s “dumb” approach to piracy.

“Many showrunners and executives I know not only pirate stuff all the time but also privately endorse the idea that piracy is good for the industry, a great way to advertise, and essential to building a healthy audience,” she explained last year.

The gentleman holding up the sign calling for the un-cuffing of Peter is actor Ross McCall. He appeared in Band of Brothers, Alexander’s movies Green Street and Green Street 2, before moving on to star in TV series including Crash, White Collar and Luther.

“The pretty blonde [0m 53s] is producer Catrin Cooper. Very outspoken about her opposition to criminalizing file-sharing,” Alexander continues. Cooper has worked in several roles on movies including Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Batman Begins.

“The guy with ‘Free Peter Sunde’ on his shirt is a writer and actor named Edward DeRuiter, one of his movies was just released last month,” Alexander adds.

“Then there’s Brent Weichsel, who against my advice decided to put his name and union on the sign. He’s Local 600 Camera Assistant.”

It’s quite something and particularly brave for these individuals to put their name to the support of someone described by studio bosses as someone intent on the ruination of the industry. That said, and as clearly pointed out on one of the signs held up in the video, Hollywood workers are not only writers and directors, they’re also humans too.

The video, which features writers and authors, directors, producers, a screenwriter, a cinematographer, an engineer and a dialect coach, is embedded below and available on Lexi’s blog.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

During the final day of May 2014, a two-year hunt came to its conclusion. A special Swedish police unit tasked with tracking down fugitives carried out a raid at a farm in Skåne, a rural area near Malmö, Sweden.

Despite continued protestations that he had committed no crimes, Sunde was transferred to the high-security Västervik Norra prison to begin an eight-month sentence. A month later Sunde applied to be moved to a lower security unit, a place more in keeping with his alleged white-collar crimes. His application was rejected.

With his release date now less than 50 days away, Sunde should have reason to be looking to the future, but instead a family tragedy has marked his final weeks in prison. After succumbing to a long illness, Sunde’s father has passed away. The event has prompted Peter’s brother, Mats Kolmisoppi, to speak out for the first time on the Pirate Bay founder’s imprisonment conditions.

“I have deliberately said very little about what happened to my brother, Peter Sunde, the last few months. Partly because he can speak for himself and does not have difficulty being heard, even though he sits in a prison with a high safety rating in Västervik,” Mats wrote on Facebook.

The problem, Mats says, is with a system that has forgotten that its job is to support offenders in order to ensure that they never return to prison.

That system has deemed that despite his non-violent crimes, Sunde should be detained in a high-security prison, a placement that was allocated to him even before a guilty verdict had been passed down and in spite of an official assessment that he presented a non-existent violence or escape risk.

As a result, Sunde has paid the price. After a continued struggle with the food provided, Mats Kolmisoppi reports that his brother has now lost 13kgs in weight. When a smiling head of department visited Sunde to deliver information on his earlier transfer request he was told: “I have good news for you Peter, your application is rejected.”

Kolmisoppi documents a long list of systematic and casual cruelties such as these, but few are as disturbing as the one he now reports.

For some time Peter and Mats’ father had been seriously ill. This summer he ended up in hospital with a catalog of issues including suspected cancer in his remaining lung. While persistent applications to see his father failed, Peter was eventually granted permission to make a hospital visit. Mats’ says that he and Peter discussed when to say goodbye to their father – they decided that should be at the funeral.

Shortly after, Peter and Mat’s father passed away. Coinciding with an incident at the prison which resulted in heightened security measures, this meant more bad news for Peter. While he would be allowed to attend the funeral, two guards would accompany him – but on the condition that he remains handcuffed.

“But I will carry my father’s coffin,” Mats’ reports Peter as saying.

“You can not count on it,” the guards responded. “You will be wearing handcuffs.”

Peter is a non-violent prisoner accused of copyright infringement offenses who at 13kgs lighter in weight represents an even lower risk of flight than his 50 days left in custody might suggest. And while there will be those in the entertainment industries who argue he deserves his punishment, the effects of his custody spread well beyond the former file-sharing site spokesman.

“As the Swedish criminal system is designed it punishes not only my brother. It punishes me, it punishes my now dead father, it punishes my mother, my family, my relatives and my friends,” Mats’ writes.

While these sad events cannot be undone, Peter is at least likely to receive a warm reception following his release. He is undoubtedly bright and has a future, as his work with micro-donation service Flattr and the NSA-proof messenger app Heml.is has shown. Indeed, he already appears to have plans. And with all the vegan food he can eat less than two months away, November can’t come soon enough.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

It wasn’t easy to meet Peter in prison. Initially, his request for the approval of my visit was rejected, as have been requests on behalf of other friends. It was only when he read up on the regulations and filed a complaint – pointing out my status as an elected representative of the European Parliament – that my visit was approved.

He tells me that this is par for the course in prison. “If you don’t constantly insist upon your rights, you will be denied them”. Repeatedly, he had to remind the guards that they’re not allowed to open confidential mail he receives from journalists. His alleged right to an education or occupation during his jail time in practice amounted to being given a beginners’ Spanish book.

“Prison is a bit like copyright,” Peter remarks. In both areas, there is a lack of transparency and the people in power profit from the fact that the average person doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the issue. That opens the door to misuse and corruption.

Few people feel directly affected by these systems (even though a lot of Internet users commit copyright infringements, many don’t even realize that they are breaking laws and suffer no repercussions). Hence it is difficult to get traditional politics to change even the most blatant injustices that these systems produce. I ask him whether his imprisonment has changed his political views.

“It has confirmed them,” he replies. “I knew the system was broken before, but now I know to what extent.”

“The worst thing is the boredom”, Peter informs me when I ask him about life in prison. He gives an account of his daily routine: “I have soy yoghurt and muesli for breakfast, which I was recently allowed to buy from my own money, as the prison doesn’t offer any vegan food.”

That is followed by one hour of exercise – walking around the yard in circles – and sometimes the chance to play ping-pong or visit the prison library in the afternoon, before Peter is locked in his cell for the night. The only other distraction comes from the dozens of letters Peter receives every day.

Not all the books that his friends and supporters send make their way to him – they are screened for “inappropriate content” first. Other items that arrive in the mail, such as vegan candy, won’t be handed out to him until after his release, “but at least the prison has to catalog every single thing you send me, which pisses them off,” Peter says with a wink.

While his notoriety mostly comes from his role in founding the Pirate Bay, Peter has been critical of the platform’s development for a long time and has been focusing his energy on other projects.

“There should be 10,000 Pirate Bays by now!” he exclaims. “The Internet was built as a decentralized network, but ironically it is increasingly encouraging centralization. Because The Pirate Bay has been around for 11 years now, almost all other torrent sites started relying on it as a backbone. We created a single point of failure and the development of file sharing technology got stuck.”

In Peter’s eyes, the Pirate Bay has run its course and turned into a commercial enterprise that has little to do with the values it was founded on. Nowadays, the most important battles for an open Internet take place elsewhere, he says, noting that the trend towards centralization is not limited to file sharing.

Facebook alone has turned into its own little walled-garden version of the Internet that a lot of users would be content using without access to the wider Net. At the same time, services from Google to Wikipedia are working on distribution deals that make their services available to people without real Internet access.

One step to counter this trend towards centralization could be data portability, the right to take all one’s personal data from a service such as Facebook and bring it along to a competitor. The right to data portability is part of the proposed European data protection regulation that is currently stuck in negotiations among the EU member states.

“Having data portability would be a great step forward, but it’s not enough. Portability is meaningless without competition.” Peter says.

“As activists and entrepreneurs, we need to challenge monopolies. We need to build a Pirate social network that is interoperable with Facebook. Or build competition to small monopolies before they get bought up by the big players in the field. Political activism in parliaments, as the Pirate Party pursues it, is important, but needs to be combined with economic disruptions.

“The Internet won’t change fundamentally in the next two years, but in the long-term, the effects of the decisions we take today can be dramatic.”

According to Peter, establishing net neutrality, especially on mobile networks, will be one of the crucial fights. The Internet may have started out as a non-commercial space, but is entirely ruled by business arguments nowadays, and without net neutrality, large corporations will be able to strengthen their monopolies and stifle innovation. A pushback will be needed from small enterprises as well as civil society – but those groups struggle to be heard in political debates as they often lack the financial resources for large-scale lobbying efforts.

Although Peter is visibly affected by his imprisonment and talks about struggling with depression, he has not stopped making plans for the future. “Things will get easier once I get out. I’ve been a fugitive for two years and could hardly go to conferences or would have to show up unannounced.”

Once his eight month sentence has come to an end, Peter wants to get back to activism. When I ask about his upcoming projects, he starts grinning and tells me to be patient.

“All I can say now is that I’m brimming with ideas and that one of my main goals will be to develop ethical ways of funding activism. You often need money to change things. But most ways of acquiring it require you to compromise on your ideals. We can do better than that.”

Peter is now hoping for his prison sentence to eventually be transformed into house arrest, which would allow him to see his critically ill father and spend less time in isolation. Whether that happens will largely depend on whether the Swedish state will continue to view a file-sharing activist as a serious threat to the public. In a society where the majority of young people routinely break copyright law simply by sharing culture, that view seems entirely unsustainable.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sunde was transferred to Västervik Norra, the high security prison facility where he is serving the eight-month jail sentence that was handed down in 2012.

Despite the sentencing Sunde has always maintained his innocence. He utilized all legal means at his disposal to fight back, and emphasized that his role in The Pirate Bay didn’t warrant being branded a criminal.

This view is shared by many people including Julia Reda, the new Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Pirate Party. Reda will be visiting Sunde in prison later today to send her support, and points out that he shouldn’t be there in the first place.

“I am visiting Peter Sunde in prison today to express my support. The unnecessarily harsh sentence he was given illustrates that our justice system has completely lost touch with digital culture,” Reda says.

“The tactic of draconian deterrence against file sharing has failed!” she adds.

During her visit the MEP also plans to ask Sunde about his conditions. The Pirate Bay founder previously requested a transfer to a lower security facility as he was losing weight and coping with psychological issues due to his circumstances.

Sunde’s sentencing is a result of a failed witch hunt against online piracy, Reda argues. Instead of embracing those who explore new technologies and business models, authorities have wrongly opted to crack down on people such as Sunde.

The MEP believes that the focus shouldn’t be on deterrence, with authorities doing more to encourage and assist content creators to develop business models that can compete with piracy.

Reda notes that several founders of file-sharing services have become successful entrepreneurs. The developers behind Kazaa later brought Skype and Rdio, and Napster’s Sean Parker served as the first president of Facebook.

Sunde is also a digital pioneer, and actively involved in several startups including the micro-donation service Flattr and the encrypted chat application Heml.is. His contributions to these projects have been halted now, which is not the right way to go according to the MEP.

“I am saddened by the fact that Sweden has chosen to jail this digital pioneer in an attempt to make an example of him,” she says.

We hope to have more details of the MEP’s visit and Sunde’s outlook on the future later this week.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sunde’s destination was Västervik Norra, the prison allocated to him following the finalizing of his jail sentence in 2012.

The first few days and weeks of Sunde’s imprisonment went silently under the media radar, but by the end of June the former Pirate Bay spokesman was making his voice heard on his prison conditions.

Sunde has been both vegetarian and vegan, a dietary choice that has proven difficult during his incarceration. In a letter to authorities he complained that due to his needs not being met, his weight had plummeted 11 pounds (5kgs) in just four weeks.

It’s not clear whether that complaint resulted in any positive action, but just a month later Sunde is making his displeasure known once more, this time over his religious rights.

Four years ago a group of self-confessed pirates began a mission to have their beliefs recognized as a religion in Sweden. The Church of Kopimism – which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols – eventually prevailed and in 2012 was officially approved by the authorities.

Just recently Sunde tried to exercise his right to meet with a representative of his chosen religion, but was met with prison red tape in response.

“The board of spiritual care (NAV) doesn’t have any representative for the Kopimist faith with whom they cooperate and therefore the Prison and Probation Service should provide permission for electronic contact with representatives from the Kopimist faith to believers,” Sunde wrote in his letter to authorities.

Whether this complaint will result in physical or even virtual access to a Kopimist priest is not yet clear. However, since Kopimism is an official religion, the authorities may have little choice but to comply. This throws up an interesting privacy-related question that Sunde himself mused over some two-and-a-half years ago.

“In some religions…there’s a Seal of Confession – which means that when you talk to a priest in the congregation, the priest has to keep what you say confidential. This is respected in some countries as law, where the courts can not make the priest testify against the individual,” Sunde said in 2012.

“This is probably the thing that I love the most with Kopimism as a religion – we can have yet another form of P2P communication – Priest2Priest. With no legal right for anyone to listen in to the conversation perhaps.”

It seems highly unlikely that Sunde will be allowed an online “encrypted confession” with a Kopimism “priest” anytime soon, but The Church of Kopimism’s legal status could throw up some headaches and dilemmas for the authorities as they try to process Peter’s complaint.

Not that he intended that, of course.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

At the start of this weekend the torrent site decided to feature something a little more personal. The site currently displays a banner asking visitors to send their support to two of the site’s original founders.

Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde are both in prison at the moment and could use an uplifting note or two, the message suggests.

“Show your support by sending them some encouraging mail! Gottfrid is only allowed to receive letters while Peter gladly received books, letter and vegan candy,” the TPB team writes.

Peter Sunde is serving the sentence he received for his involvement with The Pirate Bay. He’s being held in a high security prison in Västervik and recently requested a transfer to a lower safety class unit.

Gottfrid Svartholm has already served his Pirate Bay sentence but currently stands accused in Denmark of hacking into the mainframe computers of IT company CSC. He faces up to five years in prison and his trial will start in two months.

When Gottfrid served his Pirate Bay sentence in Sweden he also received numerous letters and cards. He later sent a video out to thank everyone for the support he received.

“I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in any way, very much, it has meant a lot to me,” Gottfrid said at the time.

“I don’t have the time or the possibility to answer many of the letters but you should know that I read each and every one of them and it has really helped me a lot.”

—

For those who can’t read the image above, the addresses for Gottfrid and Peter are as follows.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg
c/o Jens H. Jorgensen
Politigarden, 1567, Copenhagen
Denmark

Peter Sunde
Box 248
593 23 Västervik
Sweden

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Carl Lundström’s sentence was quickly served but there was a months-long delay before Gottfrid Svartholm could be removed from Cambodia and placed in Swedish detention. It took even longer to trace and detain Peter Sunde.

More than two years had passed when the former Pirate Bay spokesman was eventually captured on May 31, 2014, the eight year anniversary of the 2006 raid on the infamous site. A special police unit dedicated to tracking down fugitives found Sunde on a farm in Skåne, Sweden.

Sunde is now detained in Västervik Norra, the prison originally allocated to him in 2012. Converted from a hospital over the past nine years, in 2012 the facility had 262 inmates and 250 staff. Sunde feels that the establishment is an inappropriate venue for his incarceration.

In a letter recently sent to the probation board, Sunde asks to be removed to a location more in keeping with his offenses.

“I hereby appeal the placement decision regarding the institution I am in. I believe that the safety class is too high for the crime I have been convicted of,” Sunde writes.

Sweden prisons are split into three security categories. Category One is reserved for the most dangerous of prisoners. Category Two covers the majority of the country’s closed prisons, while Category Three contains trusted prisoners who are believed to pose the lowest risk.

Sunde was found guilty of non-violent copyright-related offenses which means he should pose little to no risk to the public. On this basis Sunde believes he should be transferred to a Category Three prison, specifically Tygelsjö, which is close to his family. He says there is no risk of him trying to escape.

Health issues also feature prominently in Sunde’s plea to the authorities.

“I’m suffering tremendously – socially, physically as well as psychologically – by the shortcomings of Västervik,” he explains.

Those shortcomings include problems with food. While Sunde has described himself as a vegetarian, on occasions he has expressed a clear preference for vegan food. It’s not clear where the diet in Västervik falls short, but Sunde says he’s suffering to the point of going hungry. The 35-year-old reports that in the last four weeks he’s lost 11 pounds (5kgs).

While Sunde evaded capture for two years, that time didn’t go to waste. Before running for the European Parliament with the Finnish Pirate Party this year, Sunde invested in several tech-focused startups including the micro-donation service Flattr and the NSA-proof messenger app Heml.is.

While those operations are likely to continue in his absence, Sunde’s incarceration has already led to issues with a historic domain. Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy) was the group behind the founding of The Pirate Bay and although it disbanded in 2010, Sunde remained the person responsible for administering Piratbyran.org. That domain now has issues which Sunde clearly can’t solve, although others are currently trying.

In the meantime, Fredrik Neij – who is also required to serve a Pirate Bay-related 10 month prison sentence – remains a fugitive and currently resides in Asia.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sunde was wanted by Interpol for more than two years, ever since the sentence for his role in the Pirate Bay website was made final.

He has been living in Berlin for quite some time, but still had family ties in Sweden, which he visited occasionally.

Earlier today, a special Swedish police unit tasked with tracking down criminal fugitives carried out a raid at a farm in Skåne. Local law enforcement reportedly worked in collaboration with the Polish police.

While details are scarce at the moment, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reports that the arrest has been confirmed by the Swedish authorities.

According to Peter Althin, Sunde’s lawyer, the news means that his client will most likely be sent to prison to serve his 8-month sentence.

Sunde’s prison sentence was made final in 2012 after Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running criminal case against the founders of The Pirate Bay.

However, Sunde decided not to give up without a fight. First he submitted his case to the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR), and after that was rejected he tried again at the Swedish Supreme Court this year, which rejected the request earlier this month.

Thus far only Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström has completed their prison sentences. The fourth defendant, Fredrik Neij remains a fugitive and currently resides in Asia.

Interestingly, today’s arrest comes exactly eight years after The Pirate Bay servers were raided, which marked the start of the criminal prosecution of the four people connected to the site.

Despite his fugitive status Sunde has made several public appearances in recent years. He was also involved in various tech-startups, including the micro-donation service Flattr and the NSA-proof messenger app Heml.is, for which he raised more than $150,000 through a crowd-funding campaign.

Sunde also ran for European Parliament last weekend for the Finnish Pirate Party. While he received the most votes of all the Pirate candidates, it was not enough for a seat in Brussels.

More info on the arrest and Sunde’s future is likely to follow in the days to come.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This meant that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström would stand.

Both Svartholm and Lundström have completed their jail sentences, but Peter Sunde decided not to give up without a fight. First he submitted his case to the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR), and after that was rejected he tried again at the Swedish Supreme Court this year.

A childhood friend of Sunde took on the case as part of his legal training, helped by several law professors. Despite an earlier rejection by the Supreme Court, the legal team believed that there was a good chance the case would be re-opened based on recent EU rulings and regulations.

Today, however, the Supreme Court announced that it will not re-open the case. According to Swedish Radio the Court ruled that there is no new information that requires them to revisit their earlier decision.

TorrentFreak spoke to Peter Sunde, who isn’t really surprised by the outcome. His friend felt that justice would be served, but he never got his hopes up too high.

“It doesn’t affect me that much, it’s just more evidence that Sweden has no intention to follow the law or EU-regulations at all,” Sunde said.

Sunde will now continue working on several of his startups, including the NSA-proof messenger app Heml.is, for which he raised more than $150,000 through a crowd-funding campaign.

In addition, Sunde is also one of the Finnish Pirate Party candidates for the European Parliament elections later this week. If he is elected, Sunde hopes to do something about the negative effects of copyright law in Europe, something he is personally familiar with.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.