The Man Who Made Everything on the Internet Free

May 31st, 2006, Stockholm. A teenager's

bedroom server is about to become the

most hunted machine on Earth. That

server hosts the Pirate Bay, a site

responsible for bleeding Hollywood

studios of $30 billion, crippling music

labels, and making a mockery of

international copyright law. 53 armed

police officers stormed the data center,

seizing every server, every cable, every

piece of hardware in what should be the

death blow. By noon, Swedish prosecutors

hold victory press conferences.

Hollywood executives toast their win.

The world's most notorious piracy

empire, used by 25 million people daily,

is finally dead. But 72 hours later, the

pirate bay blinks back online as if

nothing happened. Its homepage now mocks

them with a pirate ship firing

cannonballs at Hollywood's sign. But

here's what terrifies every government

and corporation watching. The site

didn't just survive. It became

impossible to kill. They seized every

physical server, arrested the founders,

and it still came back. If you can't

destroy this, you can't control the

internet. How did three Swedish hackers

build something unkillable? And what did

they understand that billiondoll

corporations didn't?

Stockholm, 2001.

Gotfrieded Smartarthome sits

cross-legged on his bedroom floor,

watching cables snake from a juryrigged

server under his bed. He's 19,

shaggy-haired with a skeptical smile and

eyes that light up when discussing

cryptography. His online handle is

Anakata, a name that will become legend

and curse. In 2003, he and two allies,

Frederick Tamo, Nagege, and Peter

Broepsunda, wire together a Bit Torrent

tracker as a side project for pirate

Byron, an anti-copyright collective

operating from a Stockholm warehouse.

Their mission is to make file sharing

frictionless. No gatekeepers, no

apologies, and no tracking logs.

Gotfred's home server becomes the

beating heart of this experiment. The

tracker catches fire faster than any of

them predicted. By late 2004, their

hobby project has a name, the Pirate

Bay, and 40,000 users swapping

everything from open-source Linux

distributions to Hollywood's latest

releases. Every torrent downloaded

passes through Gotfred's machine. The

bandwidth bills start making his parents

nervous. Frederick suggests they need

commercial hosting fast. So, they launch

PRQ, a hosting company with one rule. We

host anything. We keep zero logs. While

competitors fold under legal pressure,

PRQ wears takedown [music] notices like

merit badges. The New York Times will

later describe them as highly secure, no

questions asked operators with

considerable expertise in withstanding

legal attacks. The translation is

basically, "Bring your lawsuits if you

can. We dare you." The dares pile up

quickly.

In February 2004, DreamWorks attorneys

send a cease and desist demanding

removal of Shrek to Torrance. Gotfred's

response becomes internet folklore.

Sweden is not a state in the United

States of America. For your information,

no Swedish law is being violated. It is

the opinion of us and our lawyers that

you are morons. He suggests the

Hollywood lawyers perform an

anatomically creative act with

retractable batons, then signs off, "Go

[ __ ] yourself. Polite as usual,

Anakata."

Instead of cowering, the pirate bay

posts the entire exchange on their

homepage. The letter goes viral. Traffic

to the site triples overnight. Every

legal threat becomes free advertising

for their outlaw brand. By mid 2005,

Pirate Bay is managing traffic that

would make most tech startups envious.

The site runs on code Gotfred writes

mostly alone, including a custom tracker

called Hyper Cube that coordinates file

sharing across millions of machines

simultaneously.

At peak, [music]

25 million peers worldwide connect

through Pirate Bay's infrastructure.

Enough traffic to rank among the

internet's top [music] 100 sites. The

interface stays deliberately bare. a

search bar, a pirate ship logo, and an

ocean of content. Under that simplicity,

Gotfred architects something approaching

digital immortality.

Every new user makes the network harder

to destroy. Every shared file creates

redundancy. It's not a website anymore.

It's a living organism, growing faster

than anyone can regulate it. The Motion

Picture Association of America watches

this growth with mounting fury. Their

lawsuits against individual downloaders

aren't working. The real target is the

infrastructure making it all possible.

And that infrastructure has a home

address in Sweden. By early 2006, MPAA

lobbyists are working Swedish diplomatic

channels pushing officials to act emails

fly between Hollywood and Stockholm.

Pressure builds. Swedish authorities

normally hands off about internet

regulation start feeling heat from

across the Atlantic. The government

wants this problem gone. May 2006.

Gotfred's phone vibrates with a warning

from a contact inside Sweden's telecom

industry. Police are mobilizing. He

calls Frederick. They've wargamed this

scenario for months. Their disaster

recovery plan is simple. Database

backups sit encrypted on servers in the

Netherlands, ready to deploy.

If the main infrastructure falls,

they'll rebuild Pirate Bay before

Swedish TV finishes the evening news.

>> Gotfred has spent two years making sure

the site's entire existence can fit on a

thumb drive and resurrect anywhere with

electricity and bandwidth. Now, at dawn,

that preparation will be tested by 53

armed officers. The raid is coming in

hours. But here's what nobody in law

enforcement understands yet. They're

about to seize hardware while the data,

the only thing that matters, is already

halfway to Amsterdam. How long will it

take police to realize they've captured

an empty fortress? And what will Godfrey

do when they come for him personally?

May 31st, 2006. 5:47 a.m. The first door

goes down in Braang, a Stockholm suburb

where a bandwidth provider houses Pirate

Bay's primary servers. Officers move in

synchronized teams. 10 locations hit

simultaneously. In the server room,

metal racks get unplugged midoperation.

Hard drives slide into evidence bags.

Technicians in the building stand

frozen, hands raised as police haul out

equipment on wheeled dollies. Gotfred

SMA and Frederick NY are cuffed and

driven to separate interrogation rooms.

By 11:00 a.m., Swedish television is

running breaking news. Notorious piracy

website shut down.

>> The police spokesperson tells cameras

they've dismantled a major criminal

operation.

On forums worldwide, panic spreads. In

Stockholm, hundreds rally in Mentor

Square, waving pirate flags and

chanting, "Free the bay." It looks like

Hollywood scored a clean knockout. The

pirate bay's URL returns only error

messages. MPAA representatives issue

statements congratulating Swedish

authorities on their decisive action

against digital theft. Rights holders

calculate lost revenue they believe will

now return. But nobody is counting on

what happens next. June 2nd, 2006. Just

after midnight, whispers circulate. The

site is back. Users refresh their

browsers. The homepage loads. The pirate

ship logo now has a new detail. It's

firing cannonballs at a hillside sign

labeled Hollywood across the top. A

message. The galaxy's most resilient Bit

Torrent site. In the raid's confusion,

Gotfred's team had executed their

contingency plan flawlessly. They

migrated the complete database to

servers in Amsterdam, rerouted DNS, and

brought everything online in 72 hours.

The police seized the hardware, but they

couldn't touch the community or the code

that actually mattered. Peter Sunda, the

site's public face, holds a press

conference from his Stockholm apartment.

Reporters crowd around his laptop. The

downtime wasn't fear, he explains,

grinning. We were scaling up

infrastructure to handle all the new

traffic you journalists just sent us.

He's not exaggerating. The raid has

become the greatest advertising campaign

in Pirate Bay history. Traffic explodes,

doubling, then tripling pre-rade

numbers. The site crashes repeatedly

from surge load, not police action.

Gotfred and Frederick work 20our shifts

stabilizing servers. Hollywood tried to

kill them and accidentally made them

invincible.

Behind the scenes, they're hardening the

operation for the next assault. Multiple

mirror sites go live across Europe and

Asia. The codebase gets modularized,

designed to deploy on any server in any

country within hours. They distribute

backup copies to trusted admins in six

nations. When a Swedish journalist asks

how they'll survive the next raid,

Frederick doesn't hesitate. We have

plans in other countries we're not

stupid. The swagger is earned. They're

treating law enforcement as just another

network problem to root around. Swedish

prosecutors embarrassed double down.

They comb through seized evidence,

building a criminal case. Meanwhile,

Pirate Bay posts the actual police

warrant on their homepage with sarcastic

margin notes. Lol. Good luck with that.

Try harder. The trolling is relentless.

Users send donations. Traffic climbs to

30 million visits daily. What started

under Gotford's bed now runs on

infrastructure spanning three

continents.

The raid meant to destroy them has

transformed [music] Pirate Bay into a

global phenomenon. In Los Angeles, New

York, and London, executives are livid.

If a sovereign nation's police can't

keep a piracy site [music] down for even

3 days, what does that mean for control

of the internet? Boardrooms fill with

lawyers drafting new strategies.

Political pressure intensifies. New laws

get proposed. The hunters are

regrouping. And this time, they're

targeting the people, not the servers. A

trial is coming that will decide more

than just the fate of three Swedish

hackers. It will test whether the old

rules of copyright can survive the age

of decentralized networks. The pirate

bay survived the raid, but now they face

something harder to dodge. a courtroom

designed to make examples of pirates.

Will Gotfred's technical genius

translate to a legal defense? And what

happens when the establishment decides

to imprison the symbol itself?

February 16th, 2009. Stockholm District

Court. Four men sit at the defense

table. Gotfried, pale and smirking.

Frederick Nye, arms crossed. Peter Sunda

tweeting in real time. Carl Lundststrom,

the older businessman who bankrolled

early infrastructure. They dub it the

Spectre, a trial designed to be

spectacle. They look less like criminals

and more like a band showing up for a

gig. The prosecution frames them as

criminal masterminds who facilitated

millions of copyright violations and

earned millions in ad revenue. The

defense argues Pirate Bay was perfectly

legal under Swedish law. An index, not a

host. They never stored copyrighted

files. Only torrent links outside.

Protesters in pirate hats rally. Inside,

every seat is filled with journalists

from 30 countries. The trial swings

between technical minutia and

philosophical warfare. A prosecutor

attempts to explain Bit Torrent

technology and mangles the details so

badly that Gotfred interrupts from the

defense table to correct him, drawing

laughter from the gallery. Entertainment

industry lawyers present charts claiming

billions in damages. User letters flood

the court describing how Pirate Bay gave

them access to culture they couldn't

otherwise afford. Documentaries,

textbooks, rare films. The judge asks

pointed questions about profit motives.

The defense points out that ad revenue

barely covered hosting costs. Peter

Sunda blogs the entire proceeding,

turning the trial into a daily serial

for his 100,000 followers. April 17th,

2009, judgement day. The courtroom is

standing room only. The judge reads the

verdict. Guilty on all counts of

assisting copyright infringement. Each

defendant receives one year in prison.

Collectively, they owe 30 million

Swedish croner, roughly $3.6 $6 million.

The judge's tone is stern, clearly

intended to send a message to anyone

watching. Within minutes, Pirate Bay's

homepage updates its logo to a

tapemouthed Mickey Mouse. A silent

protest against what they call

Disneybacked censorship. Peter Sunda

tells reporters the sentence is bicycle

locking, meaningless punishment for a

victimless crime. Gotfred is notably

absent when the verdict is read, that

absence is foreshadowing. Appeals begin

immediately. Under Swedish law,

convictions aren't final until appeals

exhaust. Nobody goes to prison yet.

>> In November 2010, the appeals court

delivers a mixed ruling. Prison terms

get slightly reduced for some

defendants, but damages skyrocket to 46

million croner, over $7 million.

It's an impossible sum for four guys in

their 20s. You can't squeeze blood from

[music] a stone, Sununda writes on his

blog, pledging that not a single crona

will be voluntarily paid. Sweden's

Supreme Court refuses to hear further

appeals in 2011. The sentences are now

final and enforceable. When authorities

arrive to collect the [music]

defendants, one is missing. Gotfrieded

has vanished. Officially, he missed his

appeal hearing due to illness.

Unofficially, Swedish media reports he's

fled to Cambodia. Frederick Nye

relocates to Laos with his wife. Peter

Sunda eventually turns himself in after

a farewell tour. Speaking at hacker

conferences, Carl Lundststrom serves his

brief term under house arrest. But

Gotfred, the architect, the coder, the

engineer who built the machine, he's

gone completely dark. Interpol red

notices go out. Swedish diplomats

contact Southeast Asian governments. How

do you arrest a ghost who lives on

encrypted communication and moves

through countries without extradition

treaties? Months pass.

Occasional sightings surface. A Swedish

expat claims they saw Gotfred at a Ponam

Pen internet cafe hunched over a

ThinkPad Wikileaks later acknowledges

Smartome helped build infrastructure for

their 2010 cable leaks.

>> He's living exactly like the ideology he

coded. Stateless, mobile, impossible to

pin down.

The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, refuses to

die with its founders. In 2012, the site

makes a radical evolution. It abandons

torrent files entirely, switching to

magnet links. A torrent file is a

physical target, something police can

seize or block. A magnet [music] link is

just a text string, a hash. You can't

confiscate an equation. No torrent files

means less legal hassle, more laws. The

site's blog announces the change makes

Pirate Bay leaner and nearly impossible

to target. They release a compressed

backup of the entire site database, just

a few gigabytes. Any user can download

it and spin up a clone in minutes. The

site has become a distributed organism

designed to survive even if every

original server burns. By late 2011,

traffic to Pirate Bay remains steady at

record highs. The convictions didn't

slow it. The raids didn't stop it. Users

treat the site as if the legal drama is

happening in a parallel universe.

Godfred's [music] creation has outgrown

him. It doesn't need its founders to

survive. But Godfred's personal story is

about to take a darker turn. The Swedish

government isn't finished with him, and

neither are the Danes. New charges are

coming that go far beyond copyright

infringement. These charges involve

government databases, stolen identities,

and allegations that will reframe

Gotfred SmartArtHome [music] from rebel

to threat. In a humid apartment in

Cambodia, a fugitive hears footsteps in

the hallway. Law enforcement has spent

18 months hunting him across Southeast

Asia. They've finally closed the

distance. What will they find on his

laptop when they kick down the door? And

are the charges waiting for him in

Sweden just the beginning?

August 30th, 2012. Phenam Pen, Cambodia.

A joint task force, Swedish officials

and Cambodian police, moves on a

waterfront apartment in the capital. The

door splinters. Inside, they find a

bearded 27-year-old hunched over a

laptop surrounded by empty energy drink

cans and takeout containers. Gotfrieded

Smart is arrested without resistance.

Within 72 hours, he's on a flight back

to Stockholm, deported at Sweden's

urgent request. The pirate who eluded a

copyright conviction for 16 months is

now in custody to serve his one-year

pirate bay sentence. But Swedish

prosecutors have bigger plans. They

suspect his time off grid wasn't just

hiding. They believe he was hacking. New

charges hit before he even finishes

processing into prison. unauthorized

access to Swedish government databases

and attempted bank fraud investigators

alleged that between 2010 and 2012,

while Gotfred was supposedly a fugitive

laying low, someone using his computers

breached servers at Logica, an IT

contractor managing Sweden's tax

authority systems, the intrusion

accessed national tax IDs for thousands

of Swedes and attempted to issue

fraudulent driver's licenses. Even more

audacious, evidence suggests an attempt

to penetrate Nordia Bank systems and

initiate unauthorized transfers. The

narrative shifts. Gotfred isn't just a

copyright rebel anymore. He's being

framed as a black hat hacker threatening

state infrastructure.

Gotfred denies everything. His defense

is technical and specific. His laptop

was compromised by unknown parties who

used it as a proxy. I was a puppet, he

tells his lawyer. presenting forensic

evidence that malware was found on his

machine. Someone remote controlled his

computer to conduct attacks while he was

in Cambodia. It's plausible. Security

researchers confirm his system was

infected, but prosecutors argue he's

sophisticated enough to have staged that

infection himself.

The trial in 2013 is technical, dense,

and divided. The Swedish court delivers

a split verdict. guilty of hacking into

Logica systems and accessing

confidential government data.

Insufficient evidence on the Nordia bank

charges. That count gets dismissed. The

sentence is 2 years in prison, later

reduced to one year on appeal.

Importantly, the judgment acknowledges

his computer was compromised by external

actors at certain points, but the court

rules he still bears responsibility for

the government data breach. As he begins

serving time in a Swedish prison,

another country is preparing their own

case. Denmark has been investigating a

devastating hack of their own. In 2012,

someone breached CSC, a major IT

contractor managing Danish police

databases and social security systems.

The intrusion stole personal

identification numbers for millions of

Danish citizens and accessed sensitive

law enforcement records. It's one of the

worst cyber security breaches in

Scandinavian history. Danish

investigators trace chat logs and

digital fingerprints to a familiar

alias, Anacotta.

In late 2013, as Gotfred finishes his

Swedish sentence, Denmark requests

extradition. He's immediately

transferred to Copenhagen and placed in

solitary confinement. The Danish trial

in October 2014 is intense and

unforgiving.

Prosecutors present evidence of a

six-month intrusion into CSC's

mainframes, but his defense doubles down

on the evil twin theory. The real person

behind those IRC chat handles, wasn't

Godfred at all. His codefendant, a

21-year-old Danish hacker, testifies he

met the true Anakata, and it wasn't

Smartarthome. It's a bold strategy,

claiming someone else used Gotfried's

alias and equipment to commit the

crimes. The jury doesn't buy it.

The forensic evidence is overwhelming.

Stolen CSC data on his drives, access

patterns matching his known equipment,

chat logs using his distinctive

phrasing. On October 27th, 2014, the

guilty verdict arrived. The sentence is

crushing. 3 and 1/2 years in prison, the

harshest hacking sentence in Danish

history at that point. His co-fendant,

portrayed as a minor accomplice,

receives a lenient sentence and walks

free with time served. Gotfred, hearing

the verdict, shows no emotion. Three

years of running, two trials, and

multiple convictions have drained the

fight from his face.

September 2015.

Godfred walks out of a Danish prison

thin [music] and hardened. Denmark

attempts to deport him immediately, but

Swedish police rearrest him on the

prison steps for a final one-mon

sentence. Bureaucratic leftovers from

the hacking convictions.

By December 2015, all debts are paid.

He's finally free. His mother meets him

at the gates, telling reporters he just

wants to sit by a keyboard again after 3

years away from one. Gotfred has lived

the complete hacker narrative. creation,

glory, [music] exile, conviction,

imprisonment, release.

And the pirate bay, still online, still

serving torrent from servers hosted in

locations authorities can't easily

reach, maintained by anonymous admins

and true believers. The site has

outlived multiple raids, dozens of

domain [music] seizures, and the

imprisonment of all three founders. It's

not as dominant as it once was.

Streaming services and fragmented

[music] file sharing have changed the

landscape, but type the URL and you'll

find it. Or one of countless proxies

still sailing. The Pirate Bay proved a

brutal lesson. You can't kill what has

no center. But some people never learn.

In 2011, a cyber security executive

named Aaron Bar thought he'd cracked the

code he believed he could unmask

Anonymous, another faceless, leaderless

movement that had already brought down

corporations and governments. Bar was so

confident he announced his plan

publicly. He'd expose Anonymous's

leadership, prove they weren't

untouchable, and sell his intelligence

to the FBI. He had names. He had

evidence. He had a plan. What he didn't

have was any idea what he just started.

Within 72 hours, Anonymous retaliated in

a way that would make the pirate bays

raids look gentle. They didn't just hack

HB Jerry, they dismantled everything Bar

had built, piece by humiliating piece.

If you want to see what happens when

someone declares war on the internet

itself, check out our video on the

hacker who tried to unmask [music]

anonymous. Because sometimes the hunter

becomes the prey.