The Pirate Bay
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The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) bills itself as the world's "largest BitTorrent tracker", and also acts as an index for .torrent files that it tracks. A .torrent file, in conjuction with a BitTorrent client, provides the client with the necessary information to download a file or set of files from other people who are similarly downloading that file. Because of BitTorrent's ability to handle extremely large files, it is popular for sharing large music sets and movies (legally or otherwise), as well as distribution of Linux CDs.
The Pirate Bay was started by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån in early 2004, but since October 2004 has been a separate organization.
The server which runs Hypercube Tracking Software[1] is located in Stockholm, Sweden. On June 1, 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 servers, as well as create a more user friendly interface for the frontend of the website. On May 31, 2006, the site's servers were raided by Swedish police, taking it offline. However, the replacement site up as of June 1 stated that The Pirate Bay would "be up and fully functional within a day or two", and a Pirate Bay spokesperson claimed that The Pirate Bay would move to another country if necessary to continue service .[2]
Legal threats
The Pirate Bay is known in the online file sharing community as one of the more prominent websites which distributes torrents that point to copyrighted material. In much of the world, offering such torrents could be considered an illegal aiding of copyright infringement[3], but due to the nature of Swedish law, this is not the case. In July 2005, new anti-piracy legislation was enacted in Sweden which made the distribution of software for the purposes of copyright violation illegal.[4] The Pirate Bay is well known for the "legal" page it hosts[5] featuring mockery of organizations sending copyright infringement notices and cease and desist letters to them.
A hardcopy of a reply from The Pirate Bay to Web Sheriff, in response to faxed legal threats, was sold on eBay June 8, 2005, for US $255.[6]
May 2006 police raid
At around 11 a.m. [7] on May 31, 2006, a major raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the site took place, prompted by allegations of copyright violations.
The raid, in which some 50 police officers participated, shut down the site and its servers were confiscated, as well as all other servers hosted at The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider, PRQ Inet.
Three people, aged 22, 24, and 28, were held by the police for questioning, but were released later in the evening.
Special attention has been brought to the fact that even though only the servers running The Pirate Bay were eligible for possible copyright violations, all servers in the server room were seized, even those running Piratbyrån, an independent organization fighting for file-sharing rights, as well as servers that are unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other filesharing activities.[8]
It is not clear why the raid was carried out at this particular time. The Swedish public broadcast network Sveriges Television cited unnamed sources claiming that the raid was prompted by political pressure from the United States which the Swedish government firmly denies.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote in a press release[9]: "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 site down". Dan Glickman, CEO of MPAA, also stated that "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 closure message initially caused some minor confusion, because on June 1, 2005 The Pirate Bay had posted a remarkably similar message stating that they were permanently down since they had been raided by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI, which was later admitted as a prank. The BitTorrent community, once assured of the story's truth, quickly spread the announcement across online news sites, blogs, and discussion forums.
The Pirate Bay was brought back online on a temporary server, and now displays a "SITE DOWN" message, in which they confirm that the police were in possession of valid search warrants alleging either breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The Pirate Bay recently posted pictures of the alleged empty servers raided by the police.
Piratbyrån have set up a temporary news blog to inform the public about the incident.[10] Unofficial English translations are available.[11][12]
During the night of June 1, the website of the Swedish police[13] went down due to high load. Speculations started immediately that this was a denial of service attack in retaliation of the raid against The Pirate Bay. This has not been confirmed, but according to a Swedish article in the IT news site IDG, the downtime is a result of many people connecting to a specific webpage which address is spread on IRC and various internet forums.[14] According to the article, the purpose of this action is to "show what you think of the police's behaviour". The site was still down as of June 2. The mail servers are also being attacked.[15]
Political connections
"In Sweden, the site is more than just an electronic speak-easy; it's the flagship of a national file-sharing movement that's generating an intense national debate, and has even spawned a pro-piracy political party making a credible bid for seats in the Swedish parliament."[16]
According to The Pirate Bay's blog, Petter Nilsson donated 50,000 SEK (approximately 6,500 US dollars) to help support the torrent tracker.[17] Nilsson was a candidate on the Swedish reality show Toppkandidaterna (The Top Candidates), where young contestants have the opportunity to experience politics firsthand. The contestants win by convincing others of the value of their ideas. The winner of the contest then spends their prize money in the pursuit of these ideals. Nilsson, who won the contest, pledged to donate 20% of his winnings to The Pirate Bay, which they used to buy new servers.
Associated sites
The Pirate Bay features only a very limited selection of links to pornographic material. The site "Pure T'n A" which exclusively tracks and indexes pornography claims to be part of the "Pirate Bay Moderated Network".[18] It is located in the Netherlands and requires (free) signup so as to keep track of the users' upload behavior.
See also
References
- ^ http://www.anakata.hack.se/coding/hypercube/
- ^ Mennecke, Thomas (2006-05-31). "ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized". Slyck News. Retrieved 2006-06-02.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ See, for exmaple, the 2005 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd..
- ^ http://linuxreviews.org/news/2005/02/10_way_to_go_sweeden
- ^ http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php
- ^ http://static.thepiratebay.org/lensmannen.jpg
- ^ This is based on the IRC message "[11:03:49] * neptune has quit IRC (Ping timeout: 192 seconds)" - neptune was the IRC bot of The Pirate Bay. (Timestamp is UTC plus network lag and possible computer clock offset) - #ThePirateBay on EFNet
- ^ Taken from http://www.thepiratebay.org/ :"The police officers were allowed access to the racks where the TPB 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."
- ^ "Swedish authorities sink Pirate Bay" (PDF) (Press release). Motion Picture Association of America. 2006-05-31.
- ^ http://piratbyran.blogspot.com
- ^ http://tpbeng.blogspot.com/
- ^ http://piratbyran-in-eng.blogspot.com/
- ^ http://www.polisen.se/
- ^ http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200606/02/20060602004927_SOS/20060602004927_SOS.dbp.asp
- ^ http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/mail.ch?domain=polisen.se
- ^ http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70358-0.html Pirate Party Intense national debate
- ^ http://thepiratebay.org/blog.php?id=21
- ^ http://www.puretna.com
External links
- The Pirate Bay (latest news and links regarding investigation) - google cache of the page
- The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?, Wired News, (13 March 2006)
- Pictures of the server farm after the raid
- Press release (PDF) on the MPAA reagarding the shut down of the pirate bay.
- Coverage by slyck.com: ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized (31 May 2006), ThePirateBay Strikes Back (1 June 2006), Aftermath of The Pirate Raids (1 June 2006)
- The Pirate Bay Raided: Exclusive Interview (31 May 2006)
- "Corruption Goes All the Way to the Top", Says Pirate Bay Chief (1 June 2006)
- Police website under attack (1 June 2006)
- Police website exposed to overload attack (2 June 2006)
- Piratbyrån in English
- Translation effort of everything related to the raids in english