The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (TPB) is een Zweedse website die BitTorrent bestanden indexeert. Het hanteert de slogan „The world's most resilient Bittorrent site” („De meest veerkrachtige Bittorrent site ter wereld”).¹⁾ De website is volgens Alexa Internet sinds 2008 nr. 89 van de meest populaire website in de wereld en de nr. 19 in Zweden.²⁾ Volgens de Zweedse anti-copyright organisatie Piratbyrån is The Pirate Bay een langdurig kunstproject.^{3) 4)} De website wordt voornamelijk bekostigd door middel van advertenties die verschijnen naast de zoekresultaten.

The Pirate Bay werd oorspronkelijk opgericht in november 2003 door de Piratbyrån (Het Piraterij Bureau). De website bestaat sinds oktober 2004 als een onafhankelijke organisatie. Oorspronkelijk werd de site geleid door Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, ook wel bekend als anakata en TiAMO. Zij zijn beiden aangeklaagd voor het „bijdragen aan het toegankelijk maken van auteursrechtelijk materiaal” als gevolg van hun werkzaamheden voor The Pirate Bay.

Op 31 maart 2006 werden de servers van de website bij een inval door de Zweedse politie offline gehaald voor de duur van 3 dagen. Volgens Los Angeles Times werd The Pirate Bay vanaf dat moment „de meest zichtbare partij die zich internationaal als anti-copyright en pro-filesharing profileerde”. ⁵⁾ Op 15 november 2008 kondigde The Pirate Bay aan dat het meer dan 25 miljoen unieke peers had.⁶⁾ Sinds december 2009 kent The Pirate Bay ook 4 miljoen geregistreerde leden, al is dit niet vereist om torrents te downloaden.⁷⁾

The Pirate Bay is verwikkeld in een aantal juridische conflicten, zowel als aanklager als verdediger. Op 17 april 2009 werden Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström schuldig bevonden aan het „bijdragen aan het toegankelijk maken van auteursrechtelijk materiaal” en veroordeeld tot één jaar gevangenisstraf en een boete van 30 miljoen Zweedse Kroon (€ 3.100.000,-), na een rechtzaak van 9 dagen. De leden van The Pirate Bay gingen echter in hoger beroep en beschuldigden de rechter van partijdigheid.⁸⁾ Op 26 november 2010 verkorte de rechter in het hoger beroep de gevangenisstraf, maar verhoogde deze de boete tot 46 miljoen Zweedse Kroon (€ 4.750.000,-)⁹⁾ Op 17 mei 2010 werd de site offline gehaald door een klacht bij de service provider van The Pirate Bay.¹⁰⁾ Desondanks was de site kort daarna weer online waarbij de klacht met veel hoon werd weggelachen. Op 23 juni 2010 hief de groep Piratbyrån zich op na het overlijden van Kopimi Botani, een prominent lid en één van de stichters van de groep.¹¹⁾

The Pirate Bay wordt gehost door PRQ, een Zweeds bedrijf dat in het bezit is van de eigenaars van The Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij.¹²⁾ Van PRQ wordt gezegd dat deze „sterk beveiligde hosting diensten biedt zonder vragen te stellen aan diens klanten.”¹³⁾

Petter Nilsson, a candidate on the Swedish political reality show Toppkandidaterna (The Top Candidates), donated 35,000 Swedish Krona|SEK (US$4,925.83) to The Pirate Bay, which they used to buy new servers.¹⁴⁾ 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$84,442.80) per month. ^{15) 16) 17)} In an investigation in 2006, the police concluded that The Pirate Bay brings in 1.2 million SEK (US$168,885.60) per year from advertisements.^{18) 19)} The prosecution estimated in the 2009 trial from emails and screenshots that the advertisements pay over 10 million SEK (US$1.40738M) a year, ^{20) 21)} but in the indictment used the estimate from the police investigation.^{22) 23)} The lawyers of the site's administrators counted the 2006 revenue closer to 725,000 SEK (US$102,035.05).^{24) 25)} The verdict of the trial however quoted the estimate from the preliminary investigation.²⁶⁾

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.²⁷⁾ 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. “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.” 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.²⁸⁾

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.^{29) 30)} 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.³¹⁾

The Pirate Bay has servers in both Belgium and Russia which may be used in the future in case of another raid.³²⁾ According to The Pirate Bay, in the two years following the raid, the number of registered users grew from one million to 2.7 million. The number of peers grew close to five times, from 2.5 million to 12 million.³³⁾ The Pirate Bay now claims more than twenty-five million active users.

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”.^{34) 35)}

The P2P news blog, Torrentfreak.com, reported on 12 October 2007 that the Internet domain ifpi.com, which previously belonged to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IPFI), an anti-piracy organisation, 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.”³⁶⁾

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 denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) on The Pirate Bay's servers and trackers.³⁷⁾ 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,³⁸⁾ but the charges were not pursued. 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.³⁹⁾ 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.^{40) 41)} 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.⁴²⁾

The Swedish online business newspaper E24 Näringsliv reported on 15 February 2008 that the UK based 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.^{43) 44)}

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.⁴⁵⁾

The trial against the men behind the Pirate Bay started in Sweden on 16 February 2009. They are accused of breaking Swedish copyright law.⁴⁶⁾ The defendants, however, continued to be confident about the outcome.⁴⁷⁾ Half the charges against the Pirate Bay were dropped on the second day of the trial.⁴⁸⁾

The three operators of the site and their one investor Carl Lundström were convicted in Stockholm district court on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million Swedish krona 2.7 million Euro in fines and damages.⁴⁹⁾ 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,⁵⁰⁾ the same judge who ordered the 2006 raid. 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.⁵¹⁾ „Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with Peter Sunde aka brokep aka environmental politician. Our most lovely Bambuser Anna will do a live interview with Peter at 12 CET today. TV below, enjoy.”⁵²⁾

On 13 May 2009 several record companies again sued Neij, Svartholm, Sunde and also The Pirate Bay's main internet service provider Black Internet. They required enforcement for ending The Pirate Bay's accessory to copyright infringement that had not stopped despite the court order in April, and in the complaint listed several pages of works being shared with the help of the site. The suit was joined by several major film companies on 30 July.^{53) 54)} The Stockholm district court ruled on 21 August that Black Internet must stop making available the specific works mentioned in the judgment, or face a 500,000 SEK fine.⁵⁵⁾. The company was notified of the order on 24 August, and they complied with it on the same day by disconnecting The Pirate Bay.⁵⁶⁾ Computer Sweden noted that the judgment did not order The Pirate Bay to be disconnected, but the ISP had no other option for stopping the activity on the site.⁵⁷⁾ It is the first time in Sweden for an ISP to be forced to stop providing access for a website.^{58) 59) 60)} A public support fund fronted by the CEO of the ISP was set up to cover the legal fees of an appeal.⁶¹⁾ Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge submitted the case for Parliamentary Ombudsman review, criticising the court's order to make intermediaries responsible for relayed content and to assign active crime prevention tasks to a private party.^{62) 63)}

The Stockholm district court ordered on 28 October 2009 a temporary injunction on Neij and Svartholm with a penalty of 500,000 SEK each, forbidding them from participating in the operation of The Pirate Bay's website or trackers.^{64) 65)}

The appeal court decided on 21 May 2010 not to change the orders on Black Internet or Neij and Svartholm.^{66) 67)}

The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with The Pirate Bay site.^{68) 69)} The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry IFPI, who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.⁷⁰⁾

Swedish prosecutors filed charges on 31 January 2008 against Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde; and Carl Lundström, a Swedish businessman who through his businesses sold services to the site. The prosecutor claimed the four worked together to administer, host, and develop the site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law. Some 34 cases of copyright infringements were originally listed, of which 21 were related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. One case involving music files was later dropped by the copyright holder who made the file available again on The Pirate Bay site. In addition, claims for damages of 117 million Swedish krona (US$13 million) were filed.⁷¹⁾ The case was decided jointly by a judge who was a member of several pro-copyright organisations and three appointed laymen. ^{72) 73)}

The trial started on 16 February 2009 in the district court of Stockholm in Sweden. The hearings ended on 3 March 2009 and the verdict was announced at 11:00 AM on Friday 17 April 2009: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million Swedish krona (app. €2.7 million ). All the defendants have appealed the verdict.

The appeal trial concluded on October 15, 2010 ⁷⁴⁾ and the verdict was announced on November 26. The appeal court shortened sentences of three of the defendants who appeared in court that day. Neij's sentence was reduced to 10 months, Sunde's to eight, and Lundström's to four. However, the fine was increased from 32 to 46 million kronor.⁷⁵⁾

On 21 July 2009, the Amsterdam district court held a preliminary injunction hearing against the persons thought responsible for The Pirate Bay. The hearing followed a subpoena from the Dutch record industry trade association BREIN, who had an urgent complaint of intermediary copyright infringement. The defendants did not attend the hearing and hadn't arranged representation, so on 30 July 2009 the court entered an in absentia default judgement against them, accepting the complainants demands. It ruled that Neij, Kolmisoppi and Warg are „to stop and keep stopped the infringements on copyright and related rights of Stichting BREIN in the Netherlands within 9 August 2009, or face daily penalties of EUR 30,000, up to a maximum total of EUR 3,000,000. They were also ordered to pay the cost of the proceedings.^{76) 77) 78) 79)} In a separate case handled at the same time, the court ordered the same fines for the expected new owner of The Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory X, were it not to stop the copyright infringements after the site's takeover.⁸⁰⁾ According to BREIN director Tim Kuik, it is the first time a foreign website has been ordered to block access from the Netherlands.⁸¹⁾ The BREIN however waived the payment of damages for August and allowed the site to stay online until its expected change of owners at the end of August 2009.^{82) 83)}

On 2 October 2009, The Pirate Bay's hosting services moved to Ukraine and their traffic was routed through The Netherlands, but BREIN contacted the ISP NForce and service was stopped. In return, The Pirate Bay moved their hosting location to a nuclear bunker owned by CyberBunker just outside Kloetinge in the south of the Netherlands.⁸⁴⁾

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., 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”. Links to other similar sites have not been blocked.^{85) 86) 87)}

The 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. The Pirate Bay has been a topic on the nationally syndicated NPR radio show On The Media.^{88) 89)}

Björn Ulvaeus, former member of the Swedish pop music group ABBA, criticised copyright infringing activities of The Pirate Bay supporters as „lazy and mean”.^{90) 91)} In contrast, bestselling author Paulo Coelho has embraced free sharing online. Coelho supports The Pirate Bay and offered to be a witness in the 2009 trial. He accounts much of his growing sales to his work shared on the Internet and comments that „a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone.”^{92) 93) 94)}

There are three major pirate organisations in Sweden: the political Pirate Party, which won 7.1 % of the Swedish votes⁹⁵⁾ and two seats in the 2009 European Parliament election⁹⁶⁾ , the Non-governmental organisation Piratbyrån, and the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. Of these three, Piratbyrån and The Pirate Bay share a common history but are now separate. Even though the Pirate Party started hosting The Pirate Bay on May 18, 2010,⁹⁷⁾ the Pirate Party developed on a completely separate though parallel track and is unrelated to the other two.

• De officiële website van The Pirate Bay.

• Letter from John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPA, to the former State Secretary, Dan Eliasson - (17-03-2006).
• Response from Dan Eliasson - (10-04-2006).
• The Swedish Government's "orders" to the authorities - (02-03-2006).
• Håkan Roswalls (prosecutor) memo - (30-11-2005).

• The views from The Pirate Bay - (30-11-2007).
• TPBAFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard - (22-04-2009).