Pirate Bay co-founders deny ownership of site

Lawyers representing The Pirate Bay co-founders, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Warg, denied in a Dutch civil court yesterday that the Swedish men currently own the notorious BitTorrent tracker site.

They told the court that Neij and Warg sold TPB in 2006, and added that the outfit’s ex-mouthpiece, Peter Sunde, had never owned the site.

However, when questioned lawyer Ernst-Jan Louwers could not reveal to Judge Wil Tonkens whom the men had sold the site to, reports the Associated Press.

Neij, Warg and Sunde were in court disputing an earlier order that required the men to pay a daily fine of €30,000 for failing to shutter the TPB service in the Netherlands.

In a separate move yesterday, Dutch pro-copyright group Stichting Brein - which first brought legal action against the operators behind TPB in July - sought a summary judgment against Seychelles-based firm and supposed Pirate Bay-registered owner, Reservella Ltd.

Its lawyers also demanded that web traffic between TPB and the Netherlands be halted.

A ruling in both cases is expected later this month. Meanwhile, an appeals hearing for the TPB men will take place in Sweden on 13 November.

Elsewhere, Sunde AKA BrokeP, remains characteristically shouty on Twitter and his blog where he has made serious claims that Brein faked evidence, which allegedly shows Neij listed as CEO of Reservella.

"We were quite sure [Neij] did not have an offshore company set up," he wrote in a long-winded blog post yesterday. "And if he did, at least he would be smart enough to not be a director in it."

BrokeP has also been pondering a Norwegian committee’s decision to award the Nobel peace prize to that lovely, handsome bloke, Barack Obama.

“I think that the peace price [sic] should have gone to TPB more than to Obama. At least TPB did something,” opined BrokeP on his Twitter. ®