Pirate Bay founder to be deported from Cambodia

Warg failed to show up for his 12-month jail sentence, and was arrested

Cambodian police have confirmed that they plan to deport Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, the Swedish co-founder of The Pirate Bay file-sharing website, who was arrested on Monday.

The country's deputy national police chief, Sok Phal, said the decision was made after visiting Swedish officials presented legal documents on the case against him. They are now waiting for the approval of the country's interior minister.

Warg, 27, who has been living in Cambodia for several years, was sentenced to 12 months in prison for copyright violations in 2009. Swedish authorities issued an international warrant against him after he failed to show up for the start of his jail term.

Cambodia and Sweden do not have an extradition treaty, so it is unclear which country he will be deported to.

"We just know we will deport him. As to which country, that would be up to the Swedish side," police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said in a statement.

Warg and The Pirate Bay's other co-founders - Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, and financier Carl Lundstrm - were convicted of encouraging copyright violations in 2009.

Neij, Sunde and Lundstrm all had their one-year jail terms reduced to between four and 10 months on appeal in 2010. They were also ordered to pay 46 million kronor (£4.3m) in damages.

As Warg did not appear at the appeal hearing, with his lawyer claiming he was too ill, the court upheld his sentence.

The operations of the Pirate Bay were mostly shut down in Sweden six years ago, but the website has continued to operate elsewhere. The site indexes torrents, or small information files that are used in a BitTorrent application to coordinate the download of content from other users on the peer-to-peer file sharing system.

On 30 April, the UK's High Court ruled The Pirate Bay violated copyright law and ordered ISPs to block access. The ban, however, is easily circumvented using proxy servers and other means, such as VPN services.

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