Jump to content

The Pirate Bay: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
GGF and The Pirate Pay are both Swedish organizations. Thus, the figure for the amount of acquisition should be in Swedish krona, not United States Dollars.
No edit summary
Line 21: Line 21:
The Pirate Bay has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as the plaintiff and as the defendant. On 17 April 2009, [[Peter Sunde]], [[Fredrik Neij]], [[Gottfrid Svartholm]] and [[Carl Lundström]] were found guilty of [[Accessory (legal term)|assistance]] to [[copyright infringement]] and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 30 million [[Swedish krona|SEK]] (app. 3,620,000 [[United States dollar|USD]]; 2,385,000 [[Pound sterling|GBP]]; or 2,684,000 [[EUR]]), after a [[The Pirate Bay trial|trial]] of nine days. The defendants have appealed against the verdict and the judge was accused of bias. Despite the trial the website has been unaffected.<ref>[http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty (Torrentfreak.com, visited april 17 2009]</ref>
The Pirate Bay has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as the plaintiff and as the defendant. On 17 April 2009, [[Peter Sunde]], [[Fredrik Neij]], [[Gottfrid Svartholm]] and [[Carl Lundström]] were found guilty of [[Accessory (legal term)|assistance]] to [[copyright infringement]] and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 30 million [[Swedish krona|SEK]] (app. 3,620,000 [[United States dollar|USD]]; 2,385,000 [[Pound sterling|GBP]]; or 2,684,000 [[EUR]]), after a [[The Pirate Bay trial|trial]] of nine days. The defendants have appealed against the verdict and the judge was accused of bias. Despite the trial the website has been unaffected.<ref>[http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty (Torrentfreak.com, visited april 17 2009]</ref>


On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company [[Global Gaming Factory X AB]] announced its intention to buy the site for [[Swedish krona|MSEK]] 60 (MSEK 60 in cash, MSEK 30 in [[Global Gaming Factory X AB|GGF]] stock). The transaction is planned to take place in August 2009. The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an [[offshore account]] where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to 'freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the internet'.<ref name="globalgamingfactory.com">[http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/pressrelease-090630.pdf Acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and new file sharing technology, P2P 2.0]</ref><ref>[http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE55T1QF20090630 Pirate Bay snapped up by Swedish software firm]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cisionwire.com/global-gaming-factory-x/acquisitions-of-the-pirate-bay-and-new-file---sharing-technology--p2p-2-0|title=Global Gaming Factory X - press release|publisher=Cision Wire|accessdate=2009-06-30}}</ref><ref>[http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164 The Pirate Bay Blog entry 164]</ref>
On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company [[Global Gaming Factory X AB]] announced its intention to buy the site for [[Swedish krona|MSEK]] 60 (MSEK 30 in cash, MSEK 30 in [[Global Gaming Factory X AB|GGF]] stock). The transaction is planned to take place in August 2009. The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an [[offshore account]] where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to 'freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the internet'.<ref name="globalgamingfactory.com">[http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/pressrelease-090630.pdf Acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and new file sharing technology, P2P 2.0]</ref><ref>[http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE55T1QF20090630 Pirate Bay snapped up by Swedish software firm]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cisionwire.com/global-gaming-factory-x/acquisitions-of-the-pirate-bay-and-new-file---sharing-technology--p2p-2-0|title=Global Gaming Factory X - press release|publisher=Cision Wire|accessdate=2009-06-30}}</ref><ref>[http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164 The Pirate Bay Blog entry 164]</ref>


== Website setup ==
== Website setup ==

Revision as of 07:06, 27 July 2009

The Pirate Bay
Type of site
Torrent index, BitTorrent tracker
Created byGottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde
RevenueAdvertisements, fees, donations, merchandise
URLthepiratebay.org
RegistrationFree

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker"[1] and is ranked as the 106th most popular website by Alexa Internet.[2] The website is primarily funded with advertisements shown next to torrent listings. Initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau), it had been operating as a separate organization since October 2004. The website is currently run by Gottfrid Svartholm (anakata) and Fredrik Neij (TiAMO).

On 31 May 2006, the website's servers, located in Stockholm, were raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days.[3] According to the Los Angeles Times, The Pirate Bay is "one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading", and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright—or pro-piracy—movement".[4] On 15 November 2008, The Pirate Bay announced that it had reached over 25 million unique peers. The Pirate Bay has about 3,600,000 registered users, although registration is not necessary to download non-pornographic torrents.[5]

The Pirate Bay has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as the plaintiff and as the defendant. On 17 April 2009, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 30 million SEK (app. 3,620,000 USD; 2,385,000 GBP; or 2,684,000 EUR), after a trial of nine days. The defendants have appealed against the verdict and the judge was accused of bias. Despite the trial the website has been unaffected.[6]

On 30 June 2009, Swedish advertising company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced its intention to buy the site for MSEK 60 (MSEK 30 in cash, MSEK 30 in GGF stock). The transaction is planned to take place in August 2009. The Pirate Bay founders stated that the profits from the sale would be placed in an offshore account where it would be used to fund projects pertaining to 'freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the internet'.[7][8][9][10]

Website setup

The Pirate Bay is a website which allows users to search for and download BitTorrent files (torrents), small files that contain metadata necessary to download the data files from other users. The torrents are organized into categories: "Audio", "Video", "Applications", "Games", "Other" and "Porn".[11] The "Porn" category is only visible for registered and logged in users and if they select the "show pornographic torrents" option in their settings page. Registration requires an email address and is free; registered users may upload their own torrents and comment on torrents. Downloading data files from other users is facilitated by the BitTorrent trackers that also run on The Pirate Bay servers.

The website features a relatively efficient browse function which enables users to see what is available in broad categories like Audio, Video, and Games as well as more specific categories like Audio books, Highres Movies, and Comics. The contents of a category can then be sorted by file name, number of seeds or leechers, dates posted, etc.

According to Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay is a long-running project of performance art.[12] Normally the front page of The Pirate Bay features a drawing of a pirate ship with the logo of the 80s anti-copyright infringement campaign Home Taping Is Killing Music on its sails.[13]

Technical details

Initially, The Pirate Bay's four Linux servers ran a custom web server called Hypercube. An old version is open source.[14] On 1 June 2005, The Pirate Bay updated its website in an effort to reduce bandwidth usage, which was reported to be at 2,000 HTTP requests per second on each of the four web servers,[15] as well as to create a more user friendly interface for the front-end of the website. The website now runs Lighttpd and PHP on its dynamic front ends, MySQL at the database back end, Sphinx on the two search systems, Memcache for caching SQL queries and PHP-sessions, and Varnish in front of Lighttpd for caching static content. The Pirate Bay consists of 31 dedicated servers including nine dynamic web fronts, a database, two search engines, and eight BitTorrent trackers.[16]

On 7 December 2007, The Pirate Bay finished the move from Hypercube to Opentracker as its BitTorrent tracking software, also enabling the use of the UDP tracker protocol for which Hypercube lacked support.[17] The Pirate Bay also announced that their servers would support SSL encryption, in response to Sweden's new wiretapping law.[18] Opentracker is free software.[19]

On 19 January 2009 The Pirate Bay launched IPv6 support for their tracker system, using an IPv6 only version of Opentracker.[20]

Funding

Petter Nilsson, a candidate on the Swedish political reality show Toppkandidaterna (The Top Candidates), donated 35,000 SEK (US$3,800) to The Pirate Bay, which they used to buy new servers.[21] As of June 2006, the website is financed through advertisements on their result pages. According to speculations by Svenska Dagbladet, the advertisements generate about 600,000 SEK (US$65,000) per month.[22][23] In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$150,000) per year from advertisements.[24] The prosecution estimated in the 2009 trial from emails and screenshots that the advertisements pay over 10 million SEK (US$1.2M) a year,[25] but in the indictment used the estimate from the police investigation.[26] The lawyers of the site's administrators counted the 2006 revenue closer to 725,000 SEK (US$100,000).[27] The verdict of the trial however quoted the estimate from the preliminary investigation.[28]

In April 2007, a rumor was confirmed on the Swedish talk show Bert that The Pirate Bay had received financial support from right-wing entrepreneur Carl Lundström. This caused some furor since Lundström, an heir to the Wasabröd fortune, is known for financing several far-right political parties and movements like Sverigedemokraterna and Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish). The size of Lundström's contributions is unknown, as are his motives. During the talk show, Piratbyrån spokesman Tobias Andersson acknowledged that "without Lundström's support, Pirate Bay would not have been able to start" and claimed that most of the money went towards acquiring servers and bandwidth.[29][30]

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) claims that the website is extremely profitable, and that The Pirate Bay is more engaged in making profit than supporting people's rights.[31] The website has insisted that these allegations are not true, stating, "It's not free to operate a Web Site on this scale," and, "If we were making lots of money I [Svartholm] wouldn't be working late at the office tonight, I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, working on my tan."[32] In response to claims of annual revenue exceeding US$3 million made by the IFPI, the site's spokesman Peter Sunde argues that the website's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.[31] In the 2009 trial, the defense estimated the site's yearly expenses to be 800,000 SEK (US$110,000).[27] It is possible to make donations to the Pirate Bay and the site also ran a fund intended to buy Sealand, a platform with debated micro-nation status.

Incidents

Raid

Main article: The Pirate Bay raid

On 31 May 2006, a raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place as ordered by judge Tomas Norström, later the presiding judge of the 2009 trial, prompted by allegations of copyright violations. Police officers shut down the website and confiscated its servers, as well as all other servers hosted by The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider, PRQ. The company is owned by two operators of The Pirate Bay. Three people—Gottfrid Svartholm, Mikael Viborg, and Fredrik Neij—were held by the police for questioning, but were released later that evening.[33] All servers in the room were seized, including those running the website of Piratbyrån, an independent organization fighting for file sharing rights, as well as servers unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other file sharing activities, including a Russian opposition news agency. Equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and fax machines were also seized.[34]

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal website down." MPAA CEO Dan Glickman also stated, "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet." The MPAA press release set forth its justification for the raid and claimed that there were three arrests; however, the individuals were not actually arrested, only held for questioning. The release also reprinted John G. Malcolm's allegation that The Pirate Bay was making money from the distribution of copyrighted material, a criticism denied by the Pirate Bay.[35]

After the raid, The Pirate Bay displayed a message that confirmed that the Swedish police had executed search warrants for breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The closure message initially caused some confusion because on 1 April 2005, April Fool's Day, The Pirate Bay had posted a similar message as a prank, stating that they were unavailable due to a raid by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI. Piratbyrån set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about the incident.[36] On 2 June 2006, The Pirate Bay was available once again, with their logo depicting a pirate ship firing cannon balls at the Hollywood sign.[37]

Fredrik Neij (alias TiAMO) speaking at Mynttorget in Stockholm during the 3 June 2006 pro-piracy protest

The Pirate Bay has servers in both Belgium and Russia which may be used in the future in case of another raid.[38] Following the raid, the number of The Pirate Bay registered users grew from one million to 2.7 million. The number of peers grew almost five times, from 2.5 million to 12 million.[3] The Pirate Bay now claims more than twenty-five million active users.[4]

Sweden's largest technology museum, the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, acquired one of the confiscated servers in 2009 and placed it in an exhibit for having great symbolic value as a "big problem or a big opportunity".[39]

Purchases

In January 2007, when the micronation of Sealand was put up for "sale", the ACFI and The Pirate Bay tried to buy it. Sealand government however didn't want to be involved with The Pirate Bay, as it in their opinion represented "theft of proprietary rights".[40][41] A new plan was formed to buy an island instead, but this too was never implemented, despite the website having raised $20,000 in donations for this cause.[42]

The BitTorrent news blog, TorrentFreak, reported on 12 October 2007 that the Internet domain ifpi.com, which previously belonged to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an anti-piracy organization, had been acquired by The Pirate Bay. When asked about how they got hold of the domain, Sunde told TorrentFreak, "It's not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it's ours and we're keeping it." The website was renamed "The International Federation of Pirates Interests."[43] However, the IFPI filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization shortly thereafter, which subsequently ordered The Pirate Bay to return the domain name to the IFPI.[44]

Autopsy photos

In September 2008, the Swedish media reported that the public preliminary investigation protocols concerning a child murder case known as the Arboga case had been made available through a torrent on The Pirate Bay. In Sweden, preliminary investigations become publicly available the moment a lawsuit is filed and can be ordered from the court by any individual. The document included pictures from the autopsy of the two murdered children, which caused their father Nicklas Jangestig to urge the website to have the pictures removed.[45] The Pirate Bay refused to remove the torrent. The torrent had been downloaded about 30 times before the media attention.[citation needed] The number of downloads increased to about 50,000 a few days later.[46] On 11 September 2008, the website's press contact Peter Sunde participated in the debate programme Debatt on the public broadcaster SVT. Sunde had agreed to participate on the condition that the father Nicklas Jangestig would not take part in the debate. Jangestig did, however, end up participating in the programme, by telephone, which made Sunde feel betrayed by SVT.[47] This caused The Pirate Bay to suspend all of its press contacts the following day.[48] It's also to be noted that no media was interested in the original uploader of the torrent. It later turned out that he was a friend of the convicted and wanted people to help find mistakes in the investigations.[citation needed]

See also: The Pirate Bay trial

In September 2007, a large number of internal emails were leaked from anti-piracy company MediaDefender by an anonymous hacker. Some of the leaked emails discussed hiring hackers to perform DoS attacks on The Pirate Bay's servers and trackers.[49] In response to the leak, The Pirate Bay filed charges in Sweden against MediaDefender clients Twentieth Century Fox Sweden AB, EMI Sweden AB, Universal Music Group Sweden AB, Universal Pictures Nordic AB, Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB, Atari Nordic AB, Activision Nordic, Ubisoft Sweden AB, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB,[50] but the charges were not pursued.[49] MediaDefender's stocks fell sharply after this incident, and several media companies withdrew from the service after the company announced the leak had caused $825,000 in losses.[51] Later, The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde accused police investigator Jim Keyzer of a conflict of interest when he declined to investigate MediaDefender. Keyzer later accepted a job for MPAA member studio Warner Brothers.[52] The leaked emails revealed that other MPAA member studios hired MediaDefender to pollute The Pirate Bay's torrent database, contradicting the MPAA's earlier claim that its member studios were not MediaDefender clients.[53]

The Swedish online business newspaper E24 Näringsliv reported on 15 February 2008 that the British anti-piracy firm Web Sheriff intended to file lawsuits in the United States and Sweden against The Pirate Bay on behalf of Prince, the Village People, Van Morrison, and the estate of Chet Baker. Lars Sandberg, Web Sheriff's local counsel in Sweden, told E24 that Web Sheriff had not yet determined whether to sue the individuals or the companies associated with the website. Peter Sunde dismissed the threats as relying on American law inapplicable in Sweden.[54][55]

In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requested assistance from the Swedish government to prevent video clips from the Beijing Olympics from being distributed via The Pirate Bay. The IOC claimed there were more than one million downloads of footage from the Olympics — mostly of the opening ceremony. The Pirate Bay, however, did not take anything down, and temporarily renamed the website to The Beijing Bay.[56]

Protestors demonstrating against The Pirate Bay trial on the first day of the trial.

The trial against the men behind the Pirate Bay started in Sweden on 16 February 2009. They are accused of breaking Swedish copyright law.[57] The defendants, however, continued to be confident about the outcome.[58] Half the charges against the Pirate Bay were dropped on the second day of the trial.[59]

The four operators of the site were convicted in Stockholm district court on 17 April, 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million SEK (3.6 million USD, 2.7 million EUR, 2.4 million GBP) in fines and damages.[60] The defendants' lawyers have appealed to the Svea Court of Appeal and have requested a retrial in the district court, alleging bias on behalf of judge Tomas Norström[61], the same judge who ordered the 2006 raid. Under Swedish law, the verdict is not lawful until all appeals have been processed.[62] The case will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court of Sweden (and parts of the case may be remitted to the European Court of Justice), and thus the appeal process could take several years before a verdict is final.[63][64]

Website

In May 2007, The Pirate Bay was attacked by a group of hackers.[65] They copied the user database, which included over 1.5 million users. The Pirate Bay reassured its users that the data was of no value and that passwords and e-mails were encrypted and hashed. Some blogs stated that a group known as the AUH (Arga Unga Hackare, Swedish for "Angry Young Hackers") were suspected of executing the attack, however the AUH stated on the Computer Sweden newspaper that they were not involved and would take revenge on those responsible for the attack.[66]

On 27 April 2009 the website of the Pirate Bay had some IPv4 connectivity issues due to a fiber issue. There was widespread speculation that this was a forced outage from the Swedish antipiracy group, accelerated somewhat by TPB adding some contact details for the Swedish antipiracy group's lawyers to its RIPE database record.[67] The site and its forums were still available via IPv6 at the time.[68]

Support campaign

On 18 February 2009 the Norwegian socialist party Red began a global campaign in support of The Pirate Bay and filesharers worldwide that lasted until 1 May. Through the website filesharer.org filesharers are encouraged to upload their photographs, as "mugshots", to "let the music and movie industry know who the file-sharers are." The site encourages participation urging people to "Upload a picture of yourself and show them what a criminal looks like!". Red politician Elin Volder Rutle is the initiator of the campaign and she states to the media that "If the guys behind Pirate Bay are criminals, then so am I, and so are most other Norwegians."[69] The campaign was timed to coincide with the trial against the founders of The Pirate Bay which began on 16 February.[70]

The Pirate Bay have also been shown support from people all over the world, with more than 200.000 (as of June 2009) members currently joined to the support group on Facebook.

Projects

Political cartoon criticizing the entertainment industry on the main page of TPB

The team behind The Pirate Bay has worked on several websites, including BayImg, an image hosting website similar to TinyPic[71] and a video-sharing website called The Video Bay, similar to the video-sharing website YouTube. The VideoBay is currently up and running but can only be viewed via most beta browsers as the site uses HTML 5. The site currently features nothing but copyrighted material and has been self dubbed "The Youtube Killer". Another one of their projects is SlopsBox, a disposable e-mail address service. The SlopsBox site was recently re-launched.[72] On 16 April 2008, Baywords was launched as a free blogging service[73] that lets users of the site blog about anything as long as it does not break any Swedish laws. As of 7 August 2008 registration to the site was closed preventing new blogs being created.[74] In mid-2007 The Pirate Bay relaunched the BitTorrent website Suprnova.org, to perform the same functions as The Pirate Bay but using different torrent trackers.[75] As of early 2009 the site has had no news updates for a year.[76] Pastebay, similar to Pastebin, was made available to the public as of March 23.

"Boink" was created by The Pirate Bay in response to the raid on Oink's Pink Palace, a music-oriented BitTorrent website. Sunde announced on 26 October 2007 that the website would launch within a few days.[77] On 24 November 2007, Sunde said that he decided to cancel BOiNK, seeing as many new websites have been created since the downfall of OiNK.[78]

On December 2008 The Pirate Bay resurrected ShareReactor as a combined eD2k and BitTorrent site.

With the success of the pirate bay, the two main server admins/owners have started work on a video streaming site, named the Video Bay. Similar to YouTube, it would host content for free via an embedded media player similar to the video player on YouTube.[79] The VideoBay is still in early beta development and is just "experimental" right now. On 22 September 2008, a website named ThePirateCity.org launched claiming to be the video streaming website from the makers of The Pirate Bay. This was later denied by Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay who said that it had nothing to do with them and would neither confirm nor deny if they were planning a video streaming website.[80]

Suprbay.org is the official forum for thepiratebay and the various sites connected to it. It is where users can request reseeding of a torrent, report malware within torrent files or illegal material on thepiratebay.

Blocking

Denmark

On 5 February 2008, the district court of Frederiksberg, Copenhagen ruled that one of Denmark's largest ISPs, DMT2-Tele2, is assisting its customers in copyright infringement by allowing the use of The Pirate Bay, and that they are to block access to the site.[81][82] Although the ISP had decided to challenge the verdict with support from the Danish Telecommunication Industries Association, they complied with it and blocked access to The Pirate Bay.[83] The Pirate Bay reacted by creating an alternate site with instructions on how to work around the block,[82] while the IFPI welcomed the block and encouraged other ISPs to follow suit.[84] The verdict was affirmed in the Eastern High Court of Denmark on 26 November 2008.[85][86] Following the court's decision, TDC, Denmark’s largest ISP and owner of most of the cables, decided to block access to The Pirate Bay as a preventive measure.[87] Other Danish ISPs have commented that they would prefer not to intervene in their customers' communication, but have reluctantly put the block in effect in order to avoid fines.[88] Tele2's owner Telenor in turn appealed the high court verdict to the Supreme Court of Denmark, which in April 2009 accepted the case for processing.[89]

Italy

In mid 2008, following the criminal charges raised in Sweden, the Italian Federation against Musical Piracy in Milan requested action in Italy. The deputy public prosecutor pursued the complaint in the Bergamo Court for Preliminary Investigations, which on 1 August 2008 decreed to block access from Italian ISPs to all Pirate Bay addresses.[90][91] The ruling was based on prevention of copyright violations by the site's users in Italian territory.[92] Once the block had been put in effect, The Pirate Bay responded on 10 August 2008 by posting instructions to work around the block and later by creating a separate site for Italians, but shortly afterwards the ISPs also blocked the alternate site.[93] Some ISPs had implemented the block by redirecting The Pirate Bay traffic to a site owned by the IFPI.[94] Italian security expert Matteo Flora suggested that by having the page redirected this way, IFPI could access Italian users' cookies and impersonate them on the official The Pirate Bay website.[95] Two Italian IT lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi together with Matteo Flora appealed to the Bergamo court, which reviewed the case and on 24 September 2008 quashed the original ruling.[96] The decision lifting the block was based on the applicability of the "preventive seizure" section of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, which cannot force actions on parties unrelated to the potential offence (ISPs to filter users' traffic).[92] With the April 2009 verdict in Sweden as a precedent, the Bergamo prosecutor intends to appeal the Italian ruling in the Supreme Court of Cassation and reinstate the block.[97] The case is due to be considered in September 2009.[98]

Ireland

In January 2009, the Irish ISP Eircom was taken to court by the four large music labels EMI, Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group in order to have the ISP monitor its customers and spot illegal file sharing.[99] After eight court days, the parties reached a settlement to introduce a three strikes policy to disconnect customers involved in copyright infringing activity.[100] The Irish Recorded Music Association continues to negotiate with other ISPs for a similar agreement.[101] On 21 February 2009, Eircom however declared that access to The Pirate Bay would soon be blocked altogether,[102] but retracted on 24 February 2009 with a statement saying that they would not block the Pirate Bay without a court order.[99]

United Kingdom

In the UK, The Pirate Bay is blocked by default by BT Mobile Broadband and other mobile broadband providers, as part of a blocking system that blocks access to sites considered to be "over 18" status. Customers can remove the block by contacting their ISP.[103]

Mainland China

The site has been blocked since 2005. Such bans are usually permanent.

Facebook

After The Pirate Bay introduced a feature in March 2009 to easily share links to torrents on the popular social networking site Facebook, Wired found in May that Facebook had started blocking the links. On further inspection, they discovered that all messages containing links to The Pirate Bay in both public and in private messages, regardless of content, were being blocked. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers commented that Facebook might be working against the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act by intercepting user messages, but Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly said that they have the right to use blocks on links where there is a "demonstrated disregard for intellectual property rights", following users' agreement on their terms of service. Links to other similar sites have not been blocked.[104][105][106]

In media

Pirate Bay is featured in Steal This Film (2006), a documentary series about society and filesharing, produced by The League of Noble Peers and also in the Danish Documentary Good Copy Bad Copy, which explores the issues surrounding file copyright.

Björn Ulvaeus, former member of the Swedish pop music group ABBA, criticised copyright infringing activities of The Pirate Bay supporters as "lazy and mean".[107][108] In contrast, bestselling author Paulo Coelho has embraced free sharing online. Coelho supports The Pirate Bay effort and offered to be a witness in the 2009 trial. He accounts much of his growing sales to his work shared on The Pirate Bay and comments that "a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone."[109][110][111]

Trial

Main article: The Pirate Bay trial

Relations to other Swedish pirate organizations

Main articles: Pirate Party and Piratbyrån

There are three major pirate organizations in Sweden: the political Pirate Party, which won 7.1 % of the Swedish votes[112] and one seat in 2009 European Parliament election,[113] the NGO Piratbyrån, and the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. Of these three, Piratbyrån and The Pirate Bay share a common history but are now separate, whereas the Pirate Party developed on a completely separate though parallel track and is unrelated to the other two.

Video streaming

Peter Sunde announced in June 2009 a video streaming venture "The Video Bay".[114] The Video Bay is still in an "Extreme Beta" phase, posting a message on the homepage telling the user "not to expect anything to work at all"[115].

Possible acquisition

On 30 June 2009 Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB announced its intention to buy The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.8 million).[7][116] Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya commented on the site's future by saying "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site". On July 16, the new owners announced that users will be charged a monthly fee for access to The Pirate Bay, in order to compensate copyright holders.

According to owners of The Pirate Bay, "no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept)."[117]

See also

References

  1. ^ Pfanner, Eric (2008-01-31). "Swedes charge 4 in case involving copyright infringement of music and films". International Herald Tribune. Archived from the original on 2008-02-03. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  2. ^ "Thepiratebay.org - The Pirate Bay". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2009-02-25.
  3. ^ a b "Two years and still going". The Pirate Bay. 2008-05-31. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  4. ^ a b "The Internet sure loves its outlaws - Los Angeles Times". Latimes.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  5. ^ "25 million!". thepiratebay.org. 2009-04-07.
  6. ^ The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty (Torrentfreak.com, visited april 17 2009
  7. ^ a b Acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and new file sharing technology, P2P 2.0
  8. ^ Pirate Bay snapped up by Swedish software firm
  9. ^ "Global Gaming Factory X - press release". Cision Wire. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
  10. ^ The Pirate Bay Blog entry 164
  11. ^ "Browse torrents". The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  12. ^ "All your bus are belong to us!". The Pirate Bay Blog. Thepiratebay.org. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  13. ^ Lechner, Marie (2007-12-07). "La K7 bande encore". Libération (in French).
  14. ^ http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3903397/hypercube_tracker_by_anakata working direct link is [1]
  15. ^ Harrison, Ann (2006-03-13). "The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?". Wired. Retrieved 2008-06-21. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  16. ^ "Technical specifications". The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  17. ^ Ernesto (2007-12-08). "The Pirate Bay Now Running on Opentracker". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  18. ^ Mennecke, Thomas (2008-06-22). "SSL Encryption Coming to The Pirate Bay". Slyck News. Retrieved 2008-08-10.
  19. ^ homepage, it is Beerware -- also The pirate bay gave a 50 Liter barrel of beer., [2]
  20. ^ The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker
  21. ^ "The First State Financed Tracker". The Pirate Bay blog. 2006-05-05. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  22. ^ Olsson, Staffan (2006-07-08). "Pirate Bay drar in miljonbelopp" (in Swedish). Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  23. ^ "TPB Raking in Millions". Rixstep. 2006-07-08. Retrieved 2009-04-25.
  24. ^ Andersen, Ivar (2009-03-02). "Rättegången mot The pirate bay: Åklagaren yrkar på fängelse". Fria Tidningen (in Swedish).
  25. ^ Sundberg, Sam (2009-03-02). ""TPB har tjänat tio miljoner om året"" (in Swedish). Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  26. ^ Swartz, Oscar (2009-03-02). ""Var är mina tio miljoner?"" (in Swedish). Nyheter24. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  27. ^ a b Kuprijanko, Alexander (2009-03-03). "Försvaret: verksamheten är laglig" (in Swedish). Sydsvenskan.
  28. ^ Dom 2009-04-17 i mål nr B 13301-06 Stockholms tingsrätt. Template:Sv icon
  29. ^ Jibbenga, Jan (2007-05-07). "The Pirate Bay admits links with right-wing benefactor". The Register. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  30. ^ Lischka, Konrad (2007-05-04). "Piratenseite im Zwielicht: Rechtspopulist finanziert Internet-Tauschbörse" (in German). Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  31. ^ a b Paul, Ryan (2008-02-01). "Pirate Bay: big revenue claims fabricated by prosecutors". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  32. ^ Daly, Steven (2007). "Pirates of the Multiplex". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2007-02-14. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  33. ^ Norton, Quinn (2006-08-16). "Secrets of The Pirate Bay". Wired. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  34. ^ "Homepage". The Pirate Bay. 2006-06-01. Retrieved 2006-06-01. The police officers were allowed access to the racks where the Pirate Bay servers and other servers are hosted. All servers in the racks were clearly marked as to which sites run on each. The police took down all servers in the racks, including the non-commercial site Piratbyrån
  35. ^ "Swedish authorities sink Pirate Bay" (PDF) (Press release). Motion Picture Association of America. 2006-05-31. Retrieved 2008-09-27.
  36. ^ "Piratbyrån - temporär nyhetsförmedling". Piratbyran.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  37. ^ Bowman, John (2006-06-09). "The Pirate Bay". CBC. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  38. ^ Libbenga, Jan (2006-06-05). "Pirate Bay resurfaces, while protesters walk the street". The Register. Retrieved 2008-10-01.
  39. ^ The Pirate Bays server på Tekniska museet Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology
  40. ^ Stroumboulopoulos, George (2007-01-16). "Prince of Sealand". The Hour. CBC Television.
  41. ^ Yam, Marcus (2007-01-22). "Sealand Prince Says No to PirateBay.org". DailyTech.
  42. ^ Libbenga, Jan (2007-01-12). "The Pirate Bay plans to buy Sealand". The Register. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  43. ^ "Anti-Piracy Organization Domain IFPI.com Now Owned by The Pirate Bay | TorrentFreak". Torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  44. ^ Mennecke, Thomas (2007-11-30). "The Pirate Bay Loses IFPI.com Domain". Slyck. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
  45. ^ "Arboga autopsy photos on The Pirate Bay". The Local. 2008-09-05. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  46. ^ "Censur". The Pirate Bay. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
  47. ^ "Debatt ber Pirate Bay om ursäkt". SVT. 2008-09-12. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  48. ^ "No more media relations". The Pirate Bay Blog. 2008-09-12. Retrieved 2008-09-27.
  49. ^ a b Graham, Flora (2009-02-16). "How The Pirate Bay sailed into infamy". BBC News.
  50. ^ Halleröd, Mia (2007-09-24). "Pirate Bay till attack mot skiv- och filmbranschen" (in Swedish). Dagens Nyheter. Retrieved 2008-09-28. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  51. ^ "MediaDefender Stock Plunges Due to Leaked Emails | TorrentFreak". Torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  52. ^ "Jim Keyzer" (in Swedish). Copyriot. 2008-03-16. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  53. ^ Kravets, David (2007-10-22). "Exclusive: I Was a Hacker for the MPAA". Wired. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  54. ^ Sokolow, Irene (2008-02-15). "Prince stämmer Pirate Bay" (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: E24.se. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  55. ^ Söderling, Fredrik (15 February 2008). "Prince stämmer Pirate Bay" (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden: Dagens Nyheter. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  56. ^ Kravets, David (2008-08-18). "Pirate Bay Renamed Beijing Bay After Olympics Tracking". Wired. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  57. ^ BBC News - Pirate Bay file-share case starts
  58. ^ Nordstrom, Louise (2009-01-15). "Pirate Bay file-sharing trial to start in Sweden". The Associated Press. Retrieved 2009-01-16.
  59. ^ BBC NEWS | Technology | Pirate Bay joy at charge change
  60. ^ The Associated Press: 4 convicted in Pirate Bay file-sharing trial
  61. ^ "Pirate Bay lawyer calls for retrial". The Local. 2009-04-23. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  62. ^ Sullivan, Tom (2009-04-17). "'Pirate Bay' founders convicted by Swedish court". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  63. ^ Spectrial » Exclusive interview with brokep today at 12 CET
  64. ^ Billboard Q&A: Lawyers Analyze Pirate Bay Case
  65. ^ "The Pirate Bay - Le plus grand tracker BitTorrent du monde". Thepiratebay.org. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  66. ^ "The Pirate Bay Infiltrated « Power of Thought". Powerofthought.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  67. ^ "Pirate Bay IP Addresses Assigned to Prosecution Lawyers". TorrentFreak. 2009-04-26. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
  68. ^ "The Pirate Bay - fiber cut". suprbay.org. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  69. ^ "Alle disse er kriminelle". Nettavisen (in Norwegian). 18 February 2009. Retrieved 18 February 2009.
  70. ^ Kalstad, Lise Marit (18 February 2009). "Rødt med egen piratkampanje". Vårt Land (in Norwegian). Retrieved 18 February 2009.
  71. ^ "The Pirate Bay - Le plus grand tracker BitTorrent du monde". Thepiratebay.org. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  72. ^ "Slopsbox - Fight the spam". Slopsbox.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  73. ^ "Pirate Bay launches free-speech blogging service". PC Pro. 2008-04-17. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  74. ^ "About : Baywords". Baywords.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  75. ^ Williams, Chris (2007-08-03). "Pirate Bay to resurrect Suprnova.org". The Register. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  76. ^ Suprnova.org – The Universal Bittorrent Source
  77. ^ "The Pirate Bay To Bring Back OiNK | TorrentFreak". Torrentfreak.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  78. ^ "Instead of confusion, music | Copy me happy". Blog.brokep.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  79. ^  . "Under the Hood of The Pirate Bay's New Video Site « NewTeeVee". Newteevee.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  80. ^ "http://ThePirateCity.org Video Streaming Site? | Irony: The Pirate Bay Gets Pirated". Webtvwire.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  81. ^ Decision of 5 February 2008 from Bailiff's Court of Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, Denmark. Case FS 14324/2007, Original Template:Da icon, Unofficial translation by Henrik Spang-Hanssen, Danish Supreme Court attorney-at-law.
  82. ^ a b "Danish ISP Will Fight Order to Block Pirate Bay". The Washington Post. 2008-02-13. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  83. ^ "Danish telecom industry teams up against IFPI". Computerworld. 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  84. ^ "Danish Enforcement Court: Close off the Pirate Bay". IFPI. February 4, 2008. Retrieved 2009-03-03.
  85. ^ Pedersen, Rune (2008-12-03). "Pirate Bay Still Blocked in Denmark". PC World. IDG. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  86. ^ Østre Landsrets kendelse af 26. november 2008: IFPI Danmark mod Sonofon A/S (Sagen om Piratebay), case B-530-08 Template:Da icon The Danish Forum for IT-law.
  87. ^ "Danish ISPs to Fight the Pirate Bay Block". TorrentFreak. February 5, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-03.
  88. ^ Söderling, Fredrik (2009-02-05). "Pirate Bay stängt under protest" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  89. ^ Kuprijanko, Alexander (2009-04-24). "Piratdom till Danmarks HD". Sydsvenskan (in Swedish). Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  90. ^ Willan, Philip (2008-08-16). "Judge Blocks Access to Pirate Bay". PC World. IDG. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  91. ^ "Ordinanza 1 agosto 2008. N.3277/08 PM. N.5329/08 GIP" (in Italian). GIP Bergamo. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
  92. ^ a b Arena, Amedeo (2008). "Italian Courts Ban Pirate Bay, but then Lift the Block". IRIS - Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory (10). European Audiovisual Observatory. ISSN 1023-8565. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  93. ^ "The Pirate Bay Blocked in Italy". TorrentFreak. 2008-09-08. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
  94. ^ Longo, Alessandro (2008-08-18). "Pirate Bay, "i discografici schedano chi va sul sito oscurato dall'Italia"" (in Italian). la Repubblica. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  95. ^ Flora, Matteo G.P. (2008-08-17). "Perchè il PM di Bergamo permette che si RUBINO le PASSWORD di ThePirateBay?" (in Italian). Lastknight.com. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  96. ^ "L'Italia sblocca l'accesso a The Pirate Bay" (in Italian). Punto Informatico. 2008-09-25. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  97. ^ Del Frate, Claudio (2009-04-19). "Pirati del Web, il pm italiano vuole la condanna bis" (in Italian). Corriere della Sera. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  98. ^ Willan, Philip (2009-04-29). "Pirate Bay verdict gives urgency to Italian case". Computerworld. IDG.
  99. ^ a b Kirk, Jeremy (February 24, 2009). "Irish ISP: We Won't Block The Pirate Bay". PC World. IDG. Retrieved 2009-03-03.
  100. ^ Collins, John (2009-01-29). "Internet users face shutdown over illegal music downloads". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  101. ^ O’Brien, Ciara (2009-04-18). "Pirate Bay may be dented but its ship sails on for more battle". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
  102. ^ Adrian Weckler (February 22, 2009). "Music-swapping sites to be blocked by internet providers". The Sunday Business Post Online. Retrieved 2009-03-03.
  103. ^ PC Pro: News: BT blocks off Pirate Bay
  104. ^ Van Buskirk, Eliot (2009-03-30). "The Pirate Bay Puts Bit Torrent on Facebook". Epicenter. Wired.
  105. ^ Singer, Ryan (2009-05-06). "Facebook's E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say". Epicenter. Wired.
  106. ^ Steier, Henning (2009-05-07). "Facebook spioniert Nutzer aus". 20 Minuten (in German).
  107. ^ Ulvaeus, Björn (2009-02-17). "Ska det vara så förbannat besvärligt att betala för sig?". Newsmill (in Swedish).
  108. ^ Lindenberger, Michael A. (2009-02-20). "Internet Pirates Face Walking the Plank in Sweden". TIME.
  109. ^ Coelho, Paulo (2009-04-13). "From Pirate Coelho Central". Paulo Coelho's Blog.
  110. ^ "Paul Coelho: "Jag stöder Pirate Bay"". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). 2009-04-15.
  111. ^ Riley, Jack (2009-04-18). "This trial has only made torrent sites much stronger". The Independent.
  112. ^ "European election results 2009 for Sweden" from elections2009-results.eu, accessed on June 7 2009
  113. ^ "Pirate Party Wins and Enters The European Parliament" from TorrentFreak.com, accessed on June 7 2009
  114. ^ Pirate Bay starts video streaming
  115. ^ [3]
  116. ^ TPB might change owner
  117. ^ User deletion
Letters and memos
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Pirate_Bay&oldid=304432499"