PeRiQuito AB is a Swedish Internet service provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

 and web hosting company created in 2004.

Ownership

Based in Stockholm, PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm

Gottfrid Svartholm

Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde...

 and Fredrik Neij

Fredrik Neij

Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij , a.k.a. TiAMO, is a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent index site and tracker. He also owned the web host PRQ, which previously hosted The Pirate Bay....

, two founders of The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...

.

Business model

Part of PRQ's business model is to host any customers regardless of how odd or controversial they may be, as long as the hosted sites follow Swedish laws. According to The New York Times, "The Pirate Bay guys have made a sport out of taunting all forms of authority, including the Swedish police, and PRQ has gone out of its way to be a host to sites that other companies would not touch." The PRQ service has been described as "highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services". The company is reported to hold almost no information about its clientele and is maintaining few if any of its own logs. Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm are said to have amassed "considerable expertise in withstanding legal attacks". Svartholm is quoted to have said "We do employ our own legal staff. We are used to this sort of situation" in a telephone interview. Due to hosting The Pirate Bay, PRQ was target of a May 2006 police raid

The Pirate Bay raid

The Pirate Bay raid took place on 31 May 2006 in Stockholm, when The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled; the increased popularity attributed...

.

Criticism

The co-founders have been criticized for hosting controversial websites, including web pages that promote paedophilia, such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association

North American Man/Boy Love Association

The North American Man/Boy Love Association is a pedophile and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors, and for the release of all men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that...

 (NAMBLA), a paedophile and pederasty advocacy organization. Local authorities and anti-paedophilia activists in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 have failed to persuade PRQ to close the sites. The pair defended their decision, citing freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

.

Other criticism originates from PRQ's hosting of the BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...

. PRQ also hosts The Piracy Bureau

Piratbyrån

Piratbyrån was a Swedish organization established to support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property — by freely sharing information and culture...

, WikiLeaks

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

, a for profit site selling pirated copies of Android applications, the Kavkaz Center

Kavkaz Center

The Kavkaz Center is a privately run website by pro-Chechen which aims to be "a Chechen internet agency which is independent, international and Islamic" that "does not represent the viewpoint of any state structures"...

, and the French far-right blog Fdesouche.

External links

• Official website
  
• The Swiss bank of Web hosts Foreign Policy on PRQ