Peter Sunde, the co-founder of the BitTorrent file-sharing website Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Southern Sweden.

Reuters reports that Sunde’s arrest followed several years on the run following an earlier conviction for Pirate Bay-related copyright violations — although Sunde has remained visible and active within the tech scene over this period.

Another Pirate Bay co-founder, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, was arrested in Cambodia in 2012 and deported to Sweden at the time. A third, Fredrik Neij, remains at large. The site’s key financier, Carl Lundstroem, served out his sentence and now lives in Switzerland according to ABC News.

Sunde will now serve the eight-month jail sentence handed down in 2010 for breaching copyright law. Sunde was also fined 46 million SEK (nearly $7 million) at the time.

The Pirate Bay website turned 10 years old last August, and continues to function — although the website notes it is now run by an organization, rather than individuals, and is registered in the Seychelles.

After moving on from Pirate Bay, Sunde had continued to be active in the digital sphere. In 2010 he co-founded a social micro-donations startup called Flattr, which — ironically enough — gives consumers of online content a way to pay for the stuff they like.

Flattr has attracted funding from Passion Capital and others, and counts Passion’s Eileen Burbidge as a board member, according to CrunchBase.

We’ve reached out to Burbidge for comment on Sunde’s arrest and will update this post with her response.

Update: In comments on Sunde’s arrest, Burbidge told TechCrunch that she is “deeply saddened” by the news of his arrest.

“I believe that history will look back on peer-to-peer and file sharing networks and highlight what a farce it was for the recording industry to litigate against developers and technology providers who wrote software — which enabled both legal and illegal activities alike as agnostic platforms. (This is akin to suing ISPs for what internet users do or the telephone company for illegal activities people might conduct/transact in a telephone call.),” said Burbidge.

“The fact that Peter has been arrested in order to serve out a criminal sentence for his role in The Pirate Bay is such a stark contrast to where other individuals are at the moment such as Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker (two of the founders of Napster), or Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (two of the founders of Kazaa).

“All of these others are heralded as tech visionaries, wunderkinds and positive disruptors for their respective roles in peer-to-peer development, file sharing and how technology has impacted users’ consumption of content and information. They are all now venture capital or angel investors, heralded as industry luminaries — and meanwhile two of the co-founders of The Pirate Bay are sitting in jail cells.”

Burbidge pointed out that the Pirate Bay remains the only file-sharing case that has resulted in criminal prosecutions.

“Swedish prosecutors filed criminal charges against TPB founders which was unprecedented and has not happened again nor since in any other jurisdiction. It’s important to recognize that this is what led to the criminal convictions and custodial sentences (jail time). Napster and Kazaa both settled civil lawsuits initiated by record labels for $36 million and $100 million, respectively,” she said.

Regarding Flattr, Burbidge added that Passion Capital remains proud to be an investor.

“We always hoped that common sense would prevail and Peter would have been able to continue working on all of the positive contributions he was making to the internet and online culture overall, including Flattr among other projects,” she added.

[Image by Share Conference via Flickr]