Bahnhof (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

for "railway station") is a 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 ...

(ISP) founded in 1994 by

Oscar Swartz Per Oscar Swartz (December 1, 1959) is a Swedish entrepreneur, writer and blogger. Oscar Swartz was born in Solna, Stockholm County. He is the great-grandson of the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Swartz, and a second cousin of the publi ...

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

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 ...

, and is the country's first independent ISP. Today the company is represented in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

, Uppsala,

Borlänge Borlänge () is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 44,898 inhabitants as of 2020. It is the seat of the Borlänge Municipality which as of 2017 had a total population of 51,604 inhabitants. History Originally Bor ...

Malmö Malmö is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, sixth-largest city in Nordic countries, the Nordic region. Located on ...

and

Umeå Umeå ( , , , locally ; ; ; ; ) is a city in northeast Sweden. It is the seat of Umeå Municipality and the capital of Västerbotten County. Situated on the Ume River, Umeå is the largest Urban areas in Sweden, locality in Norrland and the t ...

. The company is listed on

Nasdaq First North Nasdaq First North Growth Market is a division of Nasdaq Nordic and an alternative stock exchange (legally a multilateral trading facility) for smaller companies in Europe. The market place Nya Marknaden in Stockholm changed name to First North in ...

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

used to be hosted in a Bahnhof

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

inside the ultra-secure bunker

Pionen Pionen is a former civil defence center built in the White Mountains Södermalm borough of Stockholm, Sweden in 1943 to protect essential government functions. The address of the Pionen data center is Renstiernas gata 35 and 37. It was converte ...

, which is buried inside the White Mountains in

History

Bahnhof was founded in 1994 by

. It was one of Sweden's first ISPs. The company is publicly traded since December 2007 under the name BAHN-B (Aktietorget). On 11 September 2008, Bahnhof opened a new computer center inside the former civil defence center

in the White Mountains in Stockholm, Sweden. After

was kicked off of

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

in December 2010 after the

Afghan War documents leak The Afghan War documents leak, also called the Afghan War Diary, is a collection of internal U.S. military logs of the War in Afghanistan, which was published by WikiLeaks on 2010. The logs consist of over 91,000 Afghan War documents, covering ...

, it bought server space from Bahnhof, as its chairman Jon Karlung said in press interviews. Wikileaks later changed providers again and Bahnhof auctioned off the servers that previously housed Wikileaks.

Government response

On 10 March 2005, the

Swedish police The Swedish Police Authority () is the national police, police force (''Polisen'') of Sweden. The first modern police force in Sweden was established in the mid-19th century, and the police remained in effect under Municipalities of Sweden, local ...

confiscated four servers placed in the Bahnhof premises, hoping to find

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

ed material. Although these servers were located near Bahnhof's server park (in a network lab area) the company claimed they were not their property since they had been privately purchased by staff. They further presented evidence showing the material on these servers had been planted there by someone hired by

Svenska Antipiratbyrån Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, a Swedish anti-copyright infringement organisation. In 2009, Bahnhof generated controversy by failing to store the

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

es of customers, in order to defeat the Swedish government's new laws on illegal

file-sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include re ...

, transposing the EU

IPRED Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (also known as "(IPR) Enforcement Directive" or "IPRED") is a European Union directive in the field of intelle ...

regulations, which enabled ISPs to retain data longer than the

data protection Data protection may refer to: * Information privacy, also known as data privacy * Data security {{Authority control ...

regulations would allow, in order for them to be available on police request. In April 2014, the

CJEU The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ( or "''CJUE''"; Latin: Curia) is the judicial branch of the European Union (EU). Seated in the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, this EU institution consists of two separat ...

struck down the

Data Retention Directive The Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC), later declared invalid by the European Court of Justice, was at first passed on 15 March 2006 and regulated data retention, where data has been generated or processed in connection with the ...

. PTS, Sweden's telecommunications regulator, told Swedish

ISPs ISPS may refer to: * Isoprene synthase The enzyme isoprene synthase (EC 4.2.3.27) catalysis, catalyzes the chemical reaction : prenyl pyrophosphate \rightleftharpoons isoprene + diphosphate This enzyme belongs to the family of lyases, specifical ...

and telcos that they would no longer have to retain call records and internet metadata. However, after two government investigations found that Sweden's data retention law did not break its obligations to the

European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is a Supranational law, supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Draf ...

, the PTS reversed course. Most of Sweden's major telecommunications companies complied immediately, though

Tele2 Tele2 AB is a provider of mobile and fixed connectivity, telephony, data network services, TV, streaming and global Internet of things services, amongst others, to consumers and enterprises. It is headquartered in Kista Science City, Stockholm, ...

lodged an unsuccessful appeal. Bahnhof was the one holdout and it was given an order to comply by a 24 November deadline or face a five million kronor ($680,000) fine. In response Bahnhof offered all their customers a free VPN service. In October 2018,

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

secured a court order that required Swedish ISPs to block access to

Sci-Hub Sci-Hub is a library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was found ...

websites. While complying with the order, Bahnhof redirected its customers who tried to access the Elsevier website to a page where Bahnhof criticizes Elsevier and its lawsuit as censorship and working against open and fair access to information and science.

References

External links

* * * {{in lang, sv
Pictures of ''Pionen''
on ''Architecture News Plus'' Swedish companies established in 1994 Intellectual property activism Internet service providers of Sweden Companies based in Stockholm