Two months ago a Moscow court entered a verdict against Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm after he was found to be listed as contact for some of the largest Russian pirate sites. The authorities ordered him to shut down these sites and pay the legal fees. Talking to TorrentFreak, a close friend and co-worker of Svartholm now says that the Pirate Bay founder can't help Russia, even if he wanted to.

Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm is currently held in a Danish prison, where he’s a suspect in a large hacking case.

At the same time, the 29-year-old is caught up in one of the first cases under Russia’s new anti-piracy law.

In Russia copyright holders have targeted several websites, including the popular Rutor.org, which stand accused of distributing their content without permission.

The authorities found out out that Svartholm’s name appeared as the domain registrant for two of the sites, Rutor.org and Kinozal.tv. In addition, PRQ, the hosting company founded by the Pirate Bay founder, was listed as the registrant organization.

Last November, Svartholm was ordered to stop the distribution of these copyrighted works by changing the domain name information, and pay the fees for the publication of the verdict.

While it’s unclear whether Russia made any attempts to reach out to the Pirate Bay founder, a friend and former colleague at PRQ tells TorrentFreak that Svartholm can’t help them, even if he wanted to.

Andreas Carsbring says that PRQ offered customers the option to use the hosting company’s contact details, as a privacy shield. However, the client would have full control over the domain and bear the legal responsibilities, as defined in their contract.

“The service we offered at PRQ was to register the domain names as ‘Customer of PRQ’, so the domain still belongs legally to the customer even though the contact details for PRQ are being used,” Carsbring says.

There are additional signs that in the case of Rutor, the people behind the site filled out Svartholm’s name themselves, as it’s misspelled.

“In this particular case with Rutor.org it appears that the customer has registered the domain themselves using PRQ’s information, and by mistake they misspelled his last name. That might also explain why it says PRQ Inet KB, and not Customer of PRQ Inet KB as is the standard procedure.”

Rutor Whois

Even if PRQ were legally responsible there isn’t much Svartholm can do as he sold the company years ago before he left for Cambodia. In other words, Svartholm can’t help Russia in the case, even if he wanted to.

That someone else than the Pirate Bay founder has control over the domains is backed up by a recent Whois change for the Kinozal.tv. The domain no longer lists Svartholm as the contact person, a change the Pirate Bay founder himself could not have made from prison.

Carsbring, who recently launched the free.anakata.info website, believes that Svartholm may not even know about the Russian case. He hopes that the Rutor people will remove Svartholm’s name to avoid more trouble.

“I’m not sure if he’s aware of it. I’ll try to get this information through to him as soon as possible and see what he says. Hopefully the people behind Rutor.org can sort this out with PRQ Inet and update the registry to remove his name since it shouldn’t be there since years ago,” he says.

Meanwhile, Gottfrid has enough other things to worry about. The Pirate Bay founder remains in prison for now as a Danish court recently extended his custody until February 5.