By Dan Satherley
Police across Europe have launched raids on computer servers believed to host files related to illicit file-sharing services.
Fourteen countries are said to be involved in the operation, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, the UK, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
Police in Sweden arrived at the PRQ data centre in Solna, north of Stockholm, which used to host The Pirate Bay, and currently hosts files for WikiLeaks.
Swedish authorities said however the raids had nothing to do with WikiLeaks, and were targeted at the 'Warez Scene', described by Softpedia as "the secretive network of groups and servers at the top of the file-sharing food chain".
The Pirate Bay experienced about two hours of downtime, but this is not believed to be related to the raids, as the world's most famous file-sharing website is now hosted by legitimate Swedish political party, The Pirate Party.
PRQ says it handed over email addresses to police, "however, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable", says the company's Mikael Viberg.
Ars Technica reports that four individuals have been taken into custody as a result of the Europe-wide raids.
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