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Pirate Bay Co-Founder In Solitary Confinement
pigrabbitbear writes "Things aren't looking awesome for Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm, who's currently under lock and key in a newly built jail about 15 minutes north of Stockholm. Svartholm's mother Kristina says that her 28-year-old son is being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day without any human contact other than his interactions with the guards. It's been nearly two months since Svartholm was arrested in Cambodia, where he'd been living for years, and extradited back to Sweden, where he's due to spend a year behind bars and pay a $1.1 million fine for copyright offenses related to his role at the Pirate Bay. But that's not why Sweden's being so tough on him in prison. Authorities believe he may have played a role in the hacking of Logica, a Swedish technology company with ties to the country's tax authorities. They haven't charged him with any crimes yet in that case, however."
It isn't that hard to see the reason is pure vindictiveness on the part of (monied) rights holders, exercising their purchased cronies in world government.
If you followed the press releases surrounding the pirate bay, and bothered to read their "legal threats" page before they were busted, you would know that the founders of the pirate bay frequently and bluntly told the large media companies to go fuck themselves with collapsable metal batons. (And even gave suggestions about which ones were of superior quality.)
[No seriously. They really did.]
This tidbit was alluded to discreetly by various media groups covering the trial, since their peers had made open complaints to the court about the group's lack of tact and seeming lack of seriousness, demanding harsher punishments. (Essentially, they didn't like being told to go fuck themselves, and wanted the court system to use 'harsher' punishments, because they were butt-hurt over it, illistrating their own lack of professionalism in the matter.)
The outright illegal raid on PB servers, followed by the dubious cambodian extradition to sweden, and the endless trail of clearly damning evidence of government corruption in the case pretty clearly sums it up.
Do I think the guy is a hero? Certainly not. Is he getting unfairly punished in proportion to his crimes? Oh yes, certainly. Is it due to government corruption? The evidence is pretty damning...
What is he really guilty of that they want to punish him so severely?
He threatened their hegemony, and was shamelessly unafrad of him. They can't stand that, and want to use him as a poster child to instill fear in people that would be like him, and flaunt their authority.
More than anything, I'd say he is a political prisoner, on par with what the russians do routinely.