Pirate Bay's Co-Founder Warg Hit With Legal Woes In Russia

This summer, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was sentenced to jail in Sweden after being sent there from Cambodia, where he was arrested after having received a sentence back in 2009 that ultimately resulted in a multi-million fine. Warg was sentenced in Sweden over a separate hacking charge, and now faces additional woes as a Russian court has hit him with a copyright infringement charge due to hosting certain movies.

The charge revolves around the sharing of two television shows, Univer and Interns, and the Russian movie Stalingrad. Beyond those, American TV shows Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones were also cited as having been shared with Russian users through the Pirate Bay, all of which was hosted on Kinozal.tv and Rutor.org, according to a Russian media report.

Reportedly, over the last couple months both Warg and hosting provider PRQ Inet KBhave been found responsible for four of the claims against the two by the Moscow City Court, while four remaining lawsuits are still under review and could swing either way. This follows an anti-piracy law that went into effect in Russia on August 1, and represents the first big prosecution in the nation under it.

The law isn't terribly popular in the nation, if Internet petitions are something to go by, and under it copyright holders can request that a court ban the website it believes to be sharing its content. The host of the content does not have to be contacted, and the temporary ban can be made permanent via blacklisting if a review shows that the copyrighted material is being distributed through it.

SOURCE: Forbes