Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij (born 27 April 1978), alias TiAMO, is the co-founder of

The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...

, and the Swedish

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

and

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ho ...

company PRQ. Neij was one of the defendants in The Pirate Bay trial which began on 16 February 2009. He and other operators of The Pirate Bay were charged with assisting users in copyright infringing practices. His time during the aforementioned trial has been captured in the documentary film TPB AFK by Simon Klose.

Legal issues

On 17 April 2009, Neij was found guilty of copyright infringement and he was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay damages of $905,000. In November 2014, Neij was arrested in Nong Khai on an

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL (abbreviated as ICPO–INTERPOL), commonly known as Interpol ( , ; stylized in allcaps), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime cont ...

warrant while attempting to cross the border from

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

. Thai authorities stated that a US-based film association had a Thai lawyer search for Neij and aid in his capture. During his three years in Laos, he had reportedly crossed the border almost 30 times into Thailand, where he had a home on the resort island of

Phuket Phuket (; , , or ''Tongkah'') is one of the Southern Thailand, southern Provinces of Thailand, provinces (''changwat'') of Thailand. It consists of the island of Phuket, List of islands of Thailand, the country's largest island, and another 3 ...

. BayFiles, a Pirate Bay-affiliated file hosting website registered under Neij's name, was abruptly shut down after the arrest. Neij served two-thirds (200 days) of a 10-month sentence in Skänninge Prison in central

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. He was released on 1 June 2015 and is planning to settle in Laos and work in IT.

References

External links

1978 births The Pirate Bay Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Intellectual property activism Copyright activists People from Jönköping {{Sweden-bio-stub