James Delahunty
7 Sep 2010 9:49
Police have carried out anti-piracy operations in up to 14 countries across Europe. The operation, which reportedly has been in the making for the past two years, targeted top sites - or the servers at the top of the Internet piracy pyramid. The actions also appear to have left some popular file sharing websites like the Pirate Bay offline for now.
WikiLeaks host, PRQ, was also targeted by police but Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad told Swedish news outlet Expressen.se that WikiLeaks was not part of the operation. Early details indicate that raids were carried out in several European countires at the request of the Belgian authorities. Unsurprisingly, Sweden appears to have taken the lions share of the operation, with actions in Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå (at University), Eskilstuna and Solna.
"At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here," explained PRQ's Mikael Viberg. "They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we're handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable."
Four people are said to be undergoing questioning currently while computers have been seized in locations in Sweden.
UPDATE: The Pirate Bay seems to load from some locations.