Pirates strike hosting deal with Wikileaks

Sweden's Pirate Party has inked a hosting deal with Wikileaks, hoping to use its political status to prevent authorities taking the website down and making good on its recent promise to offer Wikileaks a safe haven.

Pirate Party chairman Rick Falkvinge told Swedish national paper Svenska Dag Bladet Tuesday that it signed an agreement with Wikileaks this weekend to house several severs. 

"We are raising the threshold to attack Wikileaks," Falkvinge said of the deal.

Wikileaks' servers were already hosted in Sweden with PQR, which was set up by Pirate Bay founders. In a move to fend off investigations into its sources, Wikileaks this week also announced it was seeking publisher status to give it protections available to mainstream press.

The hosting deal came as Wikileaks promised to release a further 15,000 files. The Pentagon has pleaded with it not to.

Neither the Party nor Wikileaks have disclosed the exact location of the servers, other than stating that they were based in Stockholm.

The Pirate Party has offered similar protections to The Pirate Bay, recently telling iTnews that authorities would need to attack a political group in order to shut down the site.