Sunde and three co-founders of Pirate Bay in April were sentenced to a year in prison and fined about $3.6 million in damages for providing a means of downloading content such as video and music files without compensating the copyright owners.

The Pirate Bay late last month was successfully sued in the Netherlands, and a Dutch court told the company to find a way to make sure its technology is not accessible in that country.

Sunde in his blog post wrote that while he is not giving up working on projects related to the future of the Internet, he is stepping away from the Pirate Bay spokesperson role because it takes too much of his time.

"Today marks the end of a small era for me, but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead," Sunde wrote.

Sunde was not specific in terms of his plans going forward other than finishing one book and reading others. However, on the home page of his Web site, he wrote, "Right now my current focus is on my new micro payment system Flattr and also a lot of work for a greener environment and better rights for people, not companies in our society."

Responders to Sunde's blog wished him well, and thanked him for his work on behalf of freedom on the Internet. However, one responder, crackdown, reminded Sunde that, "Putting down your role as a spokesman does not mean you can evade your responsibility for all you have done and accomplished in the past."

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