The Pirate Bay

Infobox Website
name = The Pirate Bay
logo =


caption = "The World's Largest BitTorrent Tracker"
url = http://thepiratebay.org/
type = Torrent index
registration = Free
owner = Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde
author = Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde
launch date = 21 November 2003
current status = Online
revenue = Advertisements
Users = 3,048,841

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent ("torrent") files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" [cite web|accessdate=2008-10-01|url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/31/business/pirate.php|title=Swedes charge 4 in case involving copyright infringement of music and films |work=International Herald Tribune|date=2008-01-31|author=Pfanner, Eric ] and is ranked as the 98th most popular website by Alexa Internet. [cite web|url=http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/thepiratebay.org/|title=Thepiratebay.org - The Pirate Bay|publisher=Alexa Internet|accessdate=2008-10-01] 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 has been operating as a separate organization since October 2004. The website is currently run by Gottfrid Svartholm ("anakata"), Fredrik Neij ("TiAMO") and Peter Sunde ("brokep").

On 31 May 2006, the website's servers, located in Stockholm, were raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. The Pirate Bay has also been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as the plaintiff and as the defendant. The website sued several media companies after emails from anti-piracy company MediaDefender were leaked online which revealed that the company planned on using illegal methods to take down The Pirate Bay because legal means were unsuccessful. cite web|url=http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/ |title=The Biggest Ever BitTorrent Leak: MediaDefender Internal Emails Go Public TorrentFreak |publisher=Torrentfreak.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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."cite web|url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-webscout29apr29,0,1261622.story?coll=la-home-entertainment |title=The Internet sure loves its outlaws - Los Angeles Times |publisher=Latimes.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

Website setup

The Pirate Bay website allows users to search for and download BitTorrent files ("torrents"), small files that contain machine-readable information necessary to download the data files from other users. The torrents are organized into categories: Audio, Video, Applications, Games, Other, [cite web|accessdate=2008-10-01|url=http://thepiratebay.org/browse|title=Browse torrents |publisher=The Pirate Bay ] and Porn. [cite web|accessdate=2008-10-01|url=http://thepiratebay.org/browse/501|title=Browse Porn > Movies |publisher=The Pirate Bay ] 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.

Initially, The Pirate Bay's four Linux servers ran a custom web server called Hypercube. 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, 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 and MySQL-proxy on the two database back ends, Sphinx on the search system, Memcache for caching SQL queries and PHP-sessions, and Varnish in front of Lighttpd for caching static content. The Pirate Bay consists of 24 dedicated servers including six dynamic web fronts, two databases, and eight BitTorrent trackers. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://static.thepiratebay.org/|title=Technical specifications |publisher=The Pirate Bay ]

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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-switches-to-opentracker-071208/|title=The Pirate Bay Now Running on Opentracker |publisher=TorrentFreak|date=2007-12-08|author=Ernesto ] The Pirate Bay also announced that their servers would support SSL encryption, in response to Sweden's new wiretapping law. [cite web|url=http://www.slyck.com/story1691_SSL_Encrpytion_Coming_to_The_Pirate_Bay|title=SSL Encryption Coming to The Pirate Bay|last=Mennecke|first=Thomas|date=2008-06-22|publisher=Slyck News|accessdate=2008-08-10]

Funding

Petter Nilsson, a candidate on the Swedish reality show "Toppkandidaterna" ("The Top Candidates"), donated 35,000 SEK to The Pirate Bay, which they used to buy new servers [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog.php?id=25 |title=The Pirate Bay - 's Werelds grootste BitTorrent tracker |publisher=Thepiratebay.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] As of June 2006, the website is financed through advertisements on their result pages. According to speculations by "Svenska Dagbladet", the advertisements generate about US$75,000 per month. [cite web|url=http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_334410.svd |title=Pirate Bay drar in miljonbelopp SvD |language=Swedish |publisher=Svd.se |date=2006-07-08 |accessdate=2008-09-28]

In April 2007, a rumour 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, The Pirate Bay 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/07/pirate_bay_accepted_right_wing_money/|title=The Pirate Bay admits links with right-wing benefactor |publisher=The Register|date=2007-05-07|author=Jibbenga, Jan ] [cite web|url=http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,480972,00.html |title=Piratenseite im Zwielicht: Rechtspopulist finanziert Internet-Tauschbörse - Netzwelt - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten |publisher=Spiegel.de |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

It has been suggested that the website is extremely profitable, and that The Pirate Bay is more engaged in making profit than supporting people's rights. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080201-pirate-bay-big-revenue-claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors.html|title=Pirate Bay: big revenue claims fabricated by prosecutors |publisher=Ars Technica|date=2008-02-01|author=Paul, Ryan ] 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 wouldn't be working late at the office tonight, I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, working on my tan." [cite web|author=Daly, Steven|url=http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/features/2007/03/piratebay200703?currentPage=4 |title=Pirates of the Multiplex|work=Vanity Fair|date= March 2007|accessdate=2007-02-14] In response to claims of annual revenue exceeding $3 million made by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 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. [cite web|url=http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080201-pirate-bay-big-revenue-claims-fabricated-by-prosecutors.html/|publisher=Ars Technica|title=Pirate Bay: big revenue claims fabricated by prosecutors|date=2008-02-01|accessdate=2008-02-29]

Incidents

Raid

On 31 May 2006, a raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the website took place, 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 in the evening. [cite web|accessdate=2008-10-01|url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71543?currentPage=all|title=Secrets of the Pirate Bay |work=Wired|date=2006-08-16|author=Norton, Quinn ] 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 file sharing activities, including a Russian opposition news agency. In addition, equipment such as hardware routers, switches, blank CDs, and faxes were also seized. [cite web|accessdate=2006-06-01|date=2006-06-01|url=http://www.thepiratebay.org/|title= Homepage|publisher=The Pirate Bay|quote=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]

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. [cite press release|title=Swedish authorities sink Pirate Bay|url=http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_31.pdf|publisher=Motion Picture Association of America|date=2006-05-31|accessdate=2008-09-27]

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. [cite web|url=http://piratbyran.blogspot.com/ |title=Piratbyrån - temporär nyhetsförmedling |publisher=Piratbyran.blogspot.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/piratebay.html|title=The Pirate Bay |publisher=CBC|date=2006-06-09|author=Bowman, John ]

On 31 January 2008, The Pirate Bay operators Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström were charged with "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws."cite web|url=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/pirate-bay-futu.html |title=Pirate Bay Future Uncertain After Operators Busted Threat Level from Wired.com |publisher=Blog.wired.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] If convicted, the defendants face up to two years in prison and SEK 1.2 million in restitution. [cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7219802.stm|title=Pirate Bay hit with legal action|publisher=BBC News|date=2008-01-31|accessdate=2008-06-20] The Pirate Bay's legal adviser, Mikael Viborg, has stated that because torrent files and trackers merely point to content, the site's activities are legal under Swedish law. Magnus Martensson, legal adviser for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, says the website is damaging the film industry and is liable for at least contributory copyright infringement.cite news|url=http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/03/70358|title=The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?|date=2006-03-13|first=Ann|last=Harrison|publisher="Wired"|accessdate=2008-06-21]

The Pirate Bay has servers in both Belgium and Russia may be used in the future in case of another raid. [cite web|accessdate=2008-10-01|url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/05/pirate_bay_reemerges/|title=Pirate Bay resurfaces, while protesters walk the street |work=The Register|date=2006-06-05|author=Libbenga, Jan ] Following the raid, the number of The Pirate Bay users grew from one million to 2.7 million. The number of peers grew almost five times, from 2.5 million to 12 million.cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/111|title=Two years and still going |publisher=The Pirate Bay|date=2008-05-31 ] The Pirate Bay now claims more than five million active users.

Purchases

On 26 June 2006, The Pirate Bay supported the Armed Coalition Forces of the Internets sic (ACFI) against the Swedish micronation of Ladonia. In January 2007, when the micronation of Sealand was put up for "sale", the ACFI and The Pirate Bay tried to buy it. However, they could not buy the man-made platform because the Sealand government did not want to sell to The Pirate Bay. 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/12/pirate_bay_buys_island/|title=The Pirate Bay plans to buy Sealand |work=The Register|date=2007-01-12|author=Libbenga, Jan ]

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." [cite web|url=http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-now-owned-by-the-piratebay-071012/ |title=Anti-Piracy Organization Domain IFPI.com Now Owned by The Pirate Bay TorrentFreak |publisher=Torrentfreak.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] However, the IFPI filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization shortly thereafter, who subsequently ordered The Pirate Bay to return the domain name to the IFPI. [cite web | last = Mennecke | first = Thomas | title = The Pirate Bay Loses IFPI.com Domain | publisher = Slyck | date = 2007-11-30 | url = http://www.slyck.com/story1623_The_Pirate_Bay_Loses_IFPIcom_Domain | accessdate = 2007-12-08]

Legal issues

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. 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. [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/86 |title=The Pirate Bay - Le plus grand tracker BitTorrent du monde |publisher=Thepiratebay.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] [cite web|url=http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=678&a=696415 |title=Pirate Bay till attack mot skiv- och filmbranschen |publisher=Dn.se |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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. [cite web|url=http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-stock-plunges-due-to-leaked-emails-071222/ |title=MediaDefender Stock Plunges Due to Leaked Emails TorrentFreak |publisher=Torrentfreak.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-28|url=http://copyriot.se/2008/04/18/jim-keyzer/|title=Jim Keyzer |publisher=Copyriot|language=Swedish|date=2008-03-16 ] 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/10/p2p_hacker|title=Exclusive: I Was a Hacker for the MPAA |work=Wired|date=2007-10-22|author=Kravets, David ]

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. [cite news | first=Irene | last=Sokolow | title=Prince stämmer Pirate Bay | url=http://www.e24.se/branscher/artikel_260387.e24 | publisher=E24.se | location=Stockholm, Sweden | date=2008-02-15 | accessdate=2008-02-17 | language=Swedish] [cite news | first=Fredrik | last=Söderling | title=Prince stämmer Pirate Bay | url=http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=3130&a=743184 | publisher=Dagens Nyheter | location=Stockholm, Sweden | date=February 15, 2008 | accessdate=2008-02-17 | language=Swedish ]

In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked for assistance from the Swedish government to prevent video clips from the Beijing Olympics to be shared on 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, does not plan to take anything down, and temporarily renamed the website to The Beijing Bay. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/irate-bay-renam.html|title=Pirate Bay Renamed Beijing Bay After Olympics Tracking |work=Wired|date=2008-08-18|author=Kravets, David ]

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 by any individual from the court. 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. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.thelocal.se/14168/20080905/|title=Arboga autopsy photos on The Pirate Bay |work=The Local|date=2008-09-05 ] The Pirate Bay refused to remove the torrent. The torrent had been downloaded about 30 times before the media attention. The number of downloads increased to about 50,000 a few days later. [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/censur.php|title=Censur|publisher=The Pirate Bay|accessdate=2008-09-12] On 11 September 2008, the website's press contact Peter Sunde participated in the debate programm "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 on-the-phone, which made Sunde feel betrayed by SVT. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=96231&a=1245304&lid=puff_1245314&lpos=lasmer|title=Debatt ber Pirate Bay om ursäkt |publisher=SVT|date=2008-09-12 ] This caused The Pirate Bay to suspend all of its press contacts the following day. [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/129|publisher=The Pirate Bay Blog|title=No more media relations|date=2008-09-12|accessdate=2008-09-27]

Website

In May 2007, The Pirate Bay was attacked by a group of hackers. [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/68 |title=The Pirate Bay - Le plus grand tracker BitTorrent du monde |publisher=Thepiratebay.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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. [cite web|url=http://powerofthought.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/the-pirate-bay-infiltrated/ |title=The Pirate Bay Infiltrated « Power of Thought |publisher=Powerofthought.wordpress.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

According to Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay is a long-running project of performance art. [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/101 |title=The Pirate Bay - 's Werelds grootste BitTorrent tracker |publisher=Thepiratebay.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] On 22 February 2008, the logo of The Pirate Bay was changed from a pirate ship to a pirate bus to announce the partaking in an art project which Piratbyrån has been commissioned to do for the international art biennial event, Manifesta. This art project includes a bus trip, a party, an installation, and a statement by Piratbyrån. [cite web|url=http://piratbyran.org/bus/ |title=Upgrade Your Bus to Art! |publisher=Piratbyran.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

On 10 August 2008, the front page of The Pirate Bay had a notice informing its visitors that the website and its IP addresses were blocked in Italy after a court ruling. [cite web|url=http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-blocked-in-italy-080809/|title=The Pirate Bay Blocked in Italy|date=2008-09-08|publisher=TorrentFreak|accessdate=2008-08-09] The message was changed to link to the relevant blog article [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/123|title=Fascist state censors Pirate Bay|date=2008-09-08|publisher=The Pirate Bay|accessdate=2008-08-09] after a few hours. As a countermeasure, The Pirate Bay created a mirror website so users in Italy could still access the website, but shortly afterwards this was also blocked by Italian ISPs. The web page shown to Italians is not hosted at the ISP facilities, but rather on the same servers of pro-music.org, owned by IFPI in the United Kingdom. [cite web|url=http://blog.brokep.com/2008/08/15/explain-plz/|title=Block page hosted at IFPI|date=2008-08-19|accessdate=2008-08-19] Italian security expert Matteo Flora suggests that, by having the page redirected this way, IFPI could access Italian users' cookies and impersonate them on the official The Pirate Bay website. [cite web|url=http://www.lastknight.com/2008/08/17/thepiratebay-password-a-rischio/ |title=IDS Page |publisher=Lastknight.com |accessdate=2008-09-28] The court order that demanded all Italian ISPs filter its various domain names and static IP addresses (and all such names and static addresses that may resolve to the web website in the future) was sent by the GIP ("Giudice per le indagini preliminari") Raffaella Mascarino on 1 August 2008 and designated "N.3277/08 PM. N.5329/08 GIP". [cite web|author= Monti, Andrea|url=http://www.ictlex.net/?p=934|title= GIP Bergamo - Decreto 01 agosto 2008|publisher=ICTLEX|language=Italian|accessdate=2008-09-12] A similar issue took place in February 2008 when a Danish court ordered the Danish Internet service provider Tele2 to cut off its customers' access to The Pirate Bay. The case has been appealed. [cite web|url=http://www.computerworld.dk/art/44262/ |title=Computerworld - The Battle of Pirate Bay |publisher=Computerworld.dk |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

Projects

The team behind The Pirate Bay have worked on several websites, including BayImg, an uncensored image host similar to Photobucket [cite web|url=http://thepiratebay.org/blog/72 |title=The Pirate Bay - Le plus grand tracker BitTorrent du monde |publisher=Thepiratebay.org |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] and a video-sharing website to be called The Video Bay, similar to the video-sharing service YouTube. Another one of their projects is SlopsBox, a disposable e-mail address service. The Slopsbox domain has been unaccessible since 30 April 2008 for unknown reasons. [cite web|url=http://www.slopsbox.com/ |title=Slopsbox - Fight the spam |publisher=Slopsbox.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] On 16 April 2008 they launched Baywords, an uncensored blogging service. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/188973/pirate-bay-launches-freespeech-blogging-service.html|title=Pirate Bay launches free-speech blogging service |work=PC Pro|date=2008-04-17 ] The Pirate Bay relaunched the BitTorrent website Suprnova.org, which performs the same functions as The Pirate Bay but uses different torrent trackers. [cite web|accessdate=2008-09-29|url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/03/pirate_bay_suprnova/|title=Pirate Bay to resurrect Suprnova.org |work=The Register|date=2007-08-03|author=Williams, Chris ]

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. [cite web|url=http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-to-bring-back-oink-071026/ |title=The Pirate Bay To Bring Back OiNK TorrentFreak |publisher=Torrentfreak.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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. [cite web|url=http://blog.brokep.com/2007/11/24/instead-of-confusion-music/ |title=Instead of confusion, music Copy me happy |publisher=Blog.brokep.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

The Video Bay, a website created by the administrators of The Pirate Bay to compete with YouTube, will host copyrighted content for free via an embedded media player similar to the video player on YouTube. [cite web|url=http://newteevee.com/2007/05/18/under-the-hood-of-the-pirate-bays-new-video-site/ |title=Under the Hood of The Pirate Bays New Video Site « NewTeeVee |publisher=Newteevee.com |author= |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] 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 not confirm or deny if they were planning a video streaming website. [cite web|url=http://www.webtvwire.com/is-the-pirate-city-new-tpb-streaming-site-the-pirate-bay-imposters-oh-the-irony/ |title=ThePirateCity.org Video Streaming Site? Irony: The Pirate Bay Gets Pirated |publisher=Webtvwire.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28] Another The Pirate Bay project is Baywords, a free and uncensored blog service; users of the service are allowed to blog about anything, as long as it does not break any Swedish laws, and the service is free to use. [cite web|url=http://baywords.com/about/ |title=About : Baywords |publisher=Baywords.com |date= |accessdate=2008-09-28]

ee also

*Anti-copyright
*TV Links
*Warez

References

* [http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=US&ts_mode=country] alexa.com

External links

*
* [http://thepiratebay.org/ Official website]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7120845.stm The views from The Pirate Bay] at BBC

;Letters and memos
* [http://svt.se/content/1/c6/61/24/40/pirate_mpa.pdf Letter from John G. Malcolm] , Executive Vice President of the MPA, to the former State Secretary, Dan Eliasson
* [http://svt.se/content/1/c6/61/24/40/pirate_justit.pdf Response from Dan Eliasson]
* [http://svt.se/content/1/c6/61/24/40/regeringens_fildelningsuppdrag.pdf The Swedish Governments "orders" to the authorities (in Swedish)]
* [http://svt.se/content/1/c6/61/24/40/piratebay_aklagarpm.pdf Håkan Roswalls (prosecutor) memo (in Swedish)]