After Raid On Its Servers In Sweden, Pirate Bay Goes Offline

Enlarge this image toggle caption Fredrik Persson/AFP/Getty Images Fredrik Persson/AFP/Getty Images

Pirate Bay, one of the world's most popular and largest file-sharing sites, is offline today, after police in Sweden raided their servers.

TorrentFreak, which reports on file-sharing sites, says that while Pirate Bay has been targeted by authorities in the past, this is the first time the peer-to-peer network disappeared from the Internet.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"Swedish police spokesman Paul Pintér confirmed that Tuesday's raid on a data center in Stockholm was targeted at The Pirate Bay. 'It concerned crimes related related to intellectual property rights,' he added. "Mr. Pintér declined to say if any arrests had been made in connection with the raid, but said police had seized a number of computers and servers. ... "This is not the first time The Pirate Bay has gone offline. Last year, the peer-to-peer site changed its IP address a number of times as lawmakers in different countries pressured law enforcement to shut down domains. The Pirate Bay has been run from French Guiana and Greenland, among other places."

CNet reports the raid comes a month after the arrest of the site's fourth founder. It adds that a Pirate Bay site with a Costa Rican domain has already popped up.