Posted: 24 Aug 2012 03:42 AM PDT
November 2010, the Swedish Court of Appeal found three people behind The Pirate Bay guilty of criminal copyright infringement offenses.
Fredrik Neij, one of the original founders of The Pirate Bay, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to pay several million dollars in damages to various movie and music companies.
One of the companies is the Swedish film studio Yellow Bird. The movie company is entitled to nearly $1 million (6.6m Swedish Kroner) in damages but thus far they haven’t received a penny.
In an attempt to recoup what little they can, Yellow Bird filed a petition at the Stockholm District Court this week requesting that Neij be made bankrupt. If granted, Neij (known online as TiAMO) would be barred from running a business and his finances would be taken over by a trustee.
Under Swedish bankruptcy rules individuals remain in debt and can’t simply start over with a clean slate. But according to the 34-year-old Pirate Bay founder the request is not going to change much for him.
“It doesn’t really matter what they do, I still have no assets they can take,” he told TorrentFreak.
Yellow Bird’s motives for filing for Neij’s bankruptcy are unclear, but they wouldn’t be investing time and resources if there wasn’t something to be gained. Once Neij has discussed the issue with his lawyer he’ll decide on an appropriate response.
February this year the verdict against Neij and his co-defendants was made final when Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal. However, Neij has not given up completely. Together with Peter Sunde he filed appeals with the European Court of Human Rights in June.
While Neij and Sunde are no longer involved with The Pirate Bay, the two haven’t said farewell to the file-sharing business. Last year both Pirate Bay founders teamed up again to start a one-click file-hosting service called Bayfiles.