The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is an Internet site that 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 conjunction with BitTorrent client software, provides the client program with the necessary information to download a file or set of files from other sources who are sharing or are similarly downloading that file. Due to BitTorrent's ability to handle extremely large files, it is popular for sharing large music sets, movies and software (legally or otherwise), as well as Linux distribution discs. The Pirate Bay is ranked 461 place on the most visited internet pages.

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 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 web servers, as well as to 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 until June 3, when it came online with new hosting in the Netherlands. Backup servers are planned to be put up both in Belgium and Russia.

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 some countries, offering such torrents could be considered an illegal aiding of copyright infringement^[1], but in Sweden and other countries ^[2] 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.^[3] The Pirate Bay is well known for the "legal" page it hosts^[4] 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.^[5]

May 2006 police raid

File:The Pirate Bay Hollybay.jpeg

The new ThePirateBay.org logo instituted the morning of June 3, 2006. The image depicts the famous Pirate Bay pirate ship firing cannonballs at a Hollywood sign, depicting triumph over Hollywood and MPAA.

At around 11 a.m. CET ^[6] 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.

File:Thepiratebay-down.png

"Site Down" message on 31 May, 2006.

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.

Even though only the servers running The Pirate Bay were eligible for possible copyright violations, all servers in the server 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 filesharing activities.^[7]

Whether the police were simply expected to trust the labels the server administrators had placed as to which server ran which site, or if their thorough sweep of evidence was precautionary or even legal remains unknown at this time.

File:Pirate Bay 2005.PNG

"Site Down Hoax" message on 1 June, 2005.

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^[8]: "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 MPAA release goes on to say there were three arrests while in actuality they were only held for questioning.

The closure message initially caused some minor confusion, because on June 1, 2005 The Pirate Bay had posted a 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.

File:Server898.jpg

Picture from one of PRQ's "emptied" data centers. PRQ is the hosting company that hosts the Piratebay.org website.

The Pirate Bay was, at first, brought back online on a temporary server, and displayed 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.^[9] Unofficial English translations are available.^[10]^[11]

On June 1, 2006 it was reported on ThePirateBay.org that the site would be up and fully functional within a day or two. By the end of the day, June 2, 2006, ThePirateBay.org was back up and fully operational with their famous logo depicting the pirate ship firing cannon balls at a Hollywood sign. The header displays the name The Police Bay and ThePoliceBay.org now redirects to ThePirateBay.org. Previous speculation that the Pirate Bay had rented servers in the Netherlands has proven true as the reinstated website is now indeed running on servers located in the Netherlands. As of June 3, the search function was not yet functioning, but it was possible to browse for .torrent files manually and download them; attempts at downloading .torrent files for most copyrighted materials gave 404 Not Found errors.

During the afternoon of June 1, again on June 3 and again in the morning of June 4, the website of the Swedish police^[12] 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.^[13] According to the article, the purpose of this action is to "show what you think of the police's behaviour".

On the 3rd of June, about 11.40 PM CET, website of the Government of Sweden was hit by another DDoS attack.^[14]

As part of the raid, Mikael Viborg, the legal adviser to The Pirate Bay, was arrested and had to submit a DNA probe.^[15]

Demonstrations against the police action took place on June 3 in Gothenburg and Stockholm, organized by Piratbyrån and the Pirate Party in collaboration with some other parties' youth sections (the Liberal Youth League, Green Youth and Young Left). No reports of violence were reported, and all permits required for the protests had been cleared. Approximately 500-600 people showed up at the Stockholm protest, and about 300 people for the Gothenburg protest.

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.

References

^ See, for example, the 2005 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd..
^ In Spain a court (Juzgado de Instrucción número 8 de Alicante) recently (March 29th 2006) ruled this kind of web pages are lawful
^ 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 ^{[citation needed]}
^ 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. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ 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
^ Online newspaper article on dn.se (Swedish)
^ Blog by Mikael Viborg, 1 June 2006
^ http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70358-0.html Pirate Party Intense national debate
^ http://thepiratebay.org/blog.php?id=21

External links

The Pirate Bay (Official Site)
The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?, Wired News, (13 March 2006)
Piratbyrån in English

Related to the raid May 2006

Video coverage of the beginning of the raid
Complete video coverage of the raid The site is in swedish but choosing any mirror will start the download of the (rar archived) video
TPB Issue English Translation English translations of important Swedish news articles
Press release (PDF) on the MPAA regarding 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 Back Online (3 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)
Clip from the Swedish public broadcaster SVT news program "Rapport" about the political aftermath of the Pirate Bay raid in Sweden. (2 June 2006)
Translation effort of everything related to the raids in english
Police documents, listing seized items (Swedish)
The take down of The Pirate Bay from Mikael Viborg, the legal advisor to The Piratebay.
Interview of one of the TPB maintainers, Chaosradio podcast, 3 June 2006
Photos from the demonstration, Mynttorget, 3 June 2006

[1] See, for example, the 2005 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd..

[2] In Spain a court (Juzgado de Instrucción número 8 de Alicante) recently (March 29th 2006) ruled this kind of web pages are lawful

[3] ttp://linuxreviews.org/news/2005/02/10_way_to_go_sweeden

[4] ttp://thepiratebay.org/legal.php

[5] ttp://static.thepiratebay.org/lensmannen.jpg

[6] 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 ^{[citation needed]}

[7] 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."

[8] "Swedish authorities sink Pirate Bay" (PDF) (Press release). Motion Picture Association of America. 2006-05-31. {{cite press release}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

[9] ttp://piratbyran.blogspot.com

[10] ttp://tpbeng.blogspot.com/

[11] ttp://piratbyran-in-eng.blogspot.com/

[12] ttp://www.polisen.se/

[13] ttp://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200606/02/20060602004927_SOS/20060602004927_SOS.dbp.asp

[14] Online newspaper article on dn.se (Swedish)

[15] Blog by Mikael Viborg, 1 June 2006

[16] ttp://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70358-0.html Pirate Party Intense national debate

[17] ttp://thepiratebay.org/blog.php?id=21

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