Swedish police raid the web host of WikiLeaks, PRQ
Anthony Garreffa / 12 years ago
A raid on web host PeRiQuito AB, or PRQ, was done over the weekend, where police confiscated four servers. At the moment, there are multiple file-sharing sites down, with the owner of PRQ, Mikael Viborg, suspecting that police are investigating intellectual property violations.
PRQ has been filled with controversy for years now, where they host some suspect sites such as the Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, Pedophile.se, and Chechen rebel website, Kavkaz Central.
The Pirate Bay suspiciously went offline at the time of the raid, but the team behind the site have said that they’re not longer hosted with PRQ. On another note, PRQ was actually founded by Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij in 2004.
PRQ aren’t new to raids, as this event is the third time it has happened since it opened its doors to the world. Back in 2006, authorities grabbed 180 servers in a case versus the Pirate Bay. Most of those servers actually just belonged to customers, and didn’t have any connection with the Pirate Bay.
Two years ago, PRQ was raided again, which was part of an operating against file-sharing network “the Scene”.