Njalla
| Founded | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Peter Sunde |
| Services | Domain and Internet Hosting |
| Website | |
Njalla (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈnjala]) is an anonymous domain name registrar, hosting provider and VPN provider, established by The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.[2]
History
Peter Sunde started the company in 2017 as a middle man between domain registration and registrants in order to provide anonymity.[3] Per his own account, he does not own a stake in the business.[4]
In 2018, Njalla was singled out in a complaint to the Japanese government about domain privacy services by the Content Overseas Distribution Association, a national anti-piracy industry trade group, which cited the use of Njalla's services by the defunct piracy website Mangamura.[3]
In November 2020, towards the end of the first presidency of Donald Trump, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Music Publishers Association (MPA) nominated Njalla as a "notorious market" to the United States Trade Representative for offering privacy protection to domain name registrants. In response, Sunde pointed out that the RIAA and the MPA had previously complained about the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, which he described as a "Njalla-Light". He wrote a letter to the USTR in which he denounced "a frontal attack on the lobbying efforts by wealthy organizations that are trying to control the Internet" and "putting our global democracy in jeopardy", and alluded to the spread of "fake news and trolls as presidents".[4][5]
In December 2023, the Swedish neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement alleged that Sunde was making money from child pornography through Njalla, alongside other allegations derived from the blog of its own activist and Alternative for Sweden parliamentary candidate Christian Peterson,[6] who had started his "Defamation Ombudsman" right-extremist project targeting left-wing journalists and opinion leaders with civil lawsuits earlier that year.[7]
In May 2025, the European Commission added Njalla to its counterfeit and piracy watch list, alleging that the company offered "piracy as a service". TorrentFreak reported that the allegation was erroneous and taken verbatim from a 2024 submission to the USTR by the MPA, which had coined the concept of "piracy as a service" in its previous report of 2021.[8]
In November 2025, the neo-Nazi activist Christian Peterson, now a close associate of Sweden Democrats politician Kent Ekeroth,[9] used his Substack channel to target Njalla with a call on "European authorities" to "ban Antifa structures, as the United States has done, and dismantle the digital networks that allow them to operate in the shadows", while claiming to have "alerted the Trump administration to the anti-fascist circles in Sweden".[10]
In January 2026, Njalla apparently stopped providing domain name registrar services to the popular shadow library Sci-Hub.[11][12][13]
References
- ^ "Njalla — Worlds most notorious privacy provider for domains, VPS' and VPNs". njal.la.
- ^ Adam, Louis (24 April 2017). "Njalla : un service anonyme pour les noms de domaine ?". ZDNet France (in French). Archived from the original on 2022-05-18. Retrieved 2022-05-16.
- ^ a b Maxwell, Andy (19 October 2018). "Pirate Bay Founder's 'Njalla' Criticized For Protecting Pirate Sites". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 2022-10-25. Retrieved 2022-11-05.
- ^ a b Van der Sar, Ernesto (10 November 2020). "RIAA and MPA Want Domain Registries and Njalla on US Piracy Watchlist". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 2022-10-24. Retrieved 2022-11-05.
- ^ van der Sar, Ernesto (30 November 2020). "Pirate Bay Founder Warns US Govt. Against Mafia-Esque Copyright Lobby". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 30 November 2020. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
- ^ "Pirate Bay-grundaren beskyddar AFA och pedofiler". Nordic Resistance Movement. 5 December 2023. Archived from the original on 7 December 2023. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
- ^ "Förtalsombudsmannen". Expo. 23 May 2023. Archived from the original on 4 March 2024. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
- ^ van der Sar, Ernesto (23 May 2025). "EU Piracy Watchlist Adds IPFS, FitGirl and Njalla". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 23 May 2025.
- ^ Reuterskiöld, Annie (25 November 2024). "Interna maktkampen: Hur radikalt får SD vara?". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 2026-03-07.
- ^ Peterson, Christian (3 November 2025). "From the USA to Europe: anti-fascist migrants". Substack. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
- ^ Elbakyan, Alexandra (16 January 2026). "um, it seems that Sci-Hub .se domain has been finally blocked". X. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
- ^ Elbakyan, Alexandra (18 January 2026). "When I asked Njalla what happened to the http://sci-hub.se domain, I got this reply". X. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
- ^ Elbakyan, Alexandra (19 January 2026). "I'm not a lawyer, but this feels fundamentally wrong too". X. Retrieved 7 March 2026.