Pirate Bay reportedly looking for safe havens in Norway, Spain

PanARMENIAN.Net - Embattled file-sharing site The Pirate Bay is looking for safe havens in Norway and Spain after its Swedish host came under legal pressure to shut it down, The Associated Press reports.

The Swedish Pirate Party, a small political party advocating transparency and freedom online, has provided Internet access to the site for the past three years.

But it's handing over those duties to sister parties in Norway and Spain's Catalonia region following legal threats from the Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group representing the entertainment industry, officials for all three parties told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Feb 26.

"Basically, the service that was provided by the Swedish Pirate Party is nowadays provided by the Norwegian Pirate Party, and soon also by the Catalan Pirate Party," said Kenneth Peiruza, a spokesman for the Catalan group.

The Pirate Bay is one of the world's biggest free file-sharing websites, offering millions of users a forum for downloading music, movies and computer games. The site doesn't host any pirated material itself, but acts as an index to help people find files they can share with each other using BitTorrent software. The entertainment industry has failed to shut it down, even after its operators were convicted of copyright violations in Sweden in 2009.