Poland: Creators of “Polish Rapidshare” Arrested · Global Voices
Jakub Górnicki

Earlier this month, the Polish police arrested (POL) creators and owners of OdSiebie.com service. The portal, which is currently down, was a clone of Rapidshare, and since its day one in 2007, it was continuously growing in traffic. Last stats categorise it on place 11 in category “communities” in the Polish Internet.
First rumours showed up on microblogging platforms such as Blip.pl. One of the users – shunkiano – wrote this (POL) on Nov. 1 :
Am I wrong, or OdSiebie doesn't exist anymore?
Then it was that OdSiebie.com was being shut down, and final confirmations started to show up on blogs. Paolo wrote (POL):
[…] Free hosting portal OdSiebie.com is rumoured to have been shut down. We are getting reports that the police have arrested its owner and creator [Łukasz Ć.], and also confiscated 200 CDs [with illegal copyrighted material] and four hard drives. The police have also secured userlogs. […]
Users started to be scared because the police said that they also had access to user logs of OdSiebie.com, and another rumour emerged – this time that users might be arrested as well. On Blip.pl, user frk wrote (POL):
Owner of OdSiebie.com was arrested. Police have user logs. Let's be careful.
There was much reaction to these actions in the blogosphere and throughout the Internet in Poland. First of all, it led to a protest organised by other users, which was highly popular on Wykop.pl (a service similar to Digg):
And here's a comment (POL) from Piotr Vagla, a blogger who writes about legal issues and the Internet:
Creators of YouTube have never been arrested, but I've read that owner of OdSiebie.com has just been arrested by police. Łukasz Ć. gave public interviews, saying that his portal was cool, and was making plans for the future. He also stated that the whole affair around the Swedish [The Pirate Bay] site was only a result of them not cooperating with any anti-piracy group. I don't know whether he worked with such a group but it seems that if he did, it didn't help him much. […]
At this moment, it's not clear whether the police are going to make arrests of OdSiebie.com users, although some people say so. No one has been arrested yet.