INTRO: The Pirate Bay is likely one of the most infamous
websites in the world.
Ever since it was launched in 2003, the Pirate Bay has been one of the top places to pirate
movies, software, and games.
As you would guess, this has enraged copyright holders and prosecutors who have been trying
to shut down the site and punish pirates.
But, despite how many times they take it down, it seems like it’s always just a matter
of time until the site is back up and running.
Considering this, you would think that the key to solving the issue is addressing the
root problem by taking down the founders.
But, prosecutors have tried this as well.
They’ve chased the founders across the world, thrown them in jail, and charged them with
every copyright infringement charge you can think of.
Yet, the Pirate Bay still lives on.
In fact, one of the founders is actually happy to do jail time in order to keep the Pirate
Bay alive.
So, here’s how the Pirate Bay came to life, what happened to the founders, and why prosecutors
have struggled to take it down.
THE PIRATE BAY: Taking a look back, the origins of the Pirate
Bay date back to a Swedish organization called Piratbyran which means the Piracy Bureau.
As the name suggests, the organization focused on legalizing piracy through political connections,
petitioning, and lobbying.
Most people at the organization felt that information should be allowed to freely spread
across the internet and they questioned the idea of intellectual property.
In fact, some would even argue that piracy is helpful to companies because it gets expensive
software and games into the hands of people who would have otherwise never tried it.
And once they get addicted to the said game or software, they’re much more likely to
actually buy it the second or third time around.
Now, I would never argue that piracy is moral, but there’s no doubt that software like
Windows, Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and even Grand Theft Auto wouldn’t be nearly as popular
as they are today without piracy.
This line of reasoning was basically the framework of Piratbyran, and in September of 2003, they
would decide to take it to the next level.
Three Piratebyran employees named Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Fredrik Neij launched
a file-sharing website called The Pirate Bay.
The idea was inspired by BitTorrent which made its debut a few years before this.
Originally, the Pirate Bay was run out of servers in Mexico.
Gottfrid convinced his employer who had servers in Mexico to help them run the site.
But, it didn’t take long for his employer to back off.
So, the founders were forced to bring the site back home, and Gottfrid ran it using
his Pentium 3 laptop which only had 256 megabytes of RAM.
Despite the basic setup, given the limited number of file-sharing sites back in 2003
though, it didn’t take long for pirates to flood in.
By the end of 2004, the Pirate Bay saw a total of 1 million users and 60,000 files being
shared.
As the site grew, the trio expanded their operations by getting servers and databases,
and they transformed their laptop service into an international hub for file sharing.
And by 2006, everything under the sun was being shared on the site whether that be music
and movies or software and games.
And to make things worse, the Pirate Bay wasn’t even trying to distance themselves from these
activities.
Some other popular piracy sites like Mega.nz try to put up a good guy persona in order
to minimize trouble with the law.
But that wasn’t the case with the Pirate Bay.
These guys were proud to enable free information sharing across the internet, and they had
no intention of hiding behind some fake persona.
And this attitude became extremely apparent to authorities after they sent out dozens
of copyright infringement and cease and desist notices which resulted in no action from the
founders.
The police tried to just ignore the new site for many years, but as the site continued
to grow in popularity, they started to receive more and more pressure to take it down.
And in 2006, they finally decided to crackdown.
BACKFIRE: I’m sure the founders always expected trouble
with the authorities given the nature of what they were doing.
But, I’m not sure if they expected the force at which prosecutors would hit back.
On May 31, 2006, 65 police officers raided the Pirate Bay’s data center and shut down
their servers.
None of the founders were arrested, but it was made pretty clear that the site should
not be restarted.
As you would guess though, the founders ignored these demands.
They went ahead and got new servers in an unspecified location in the Netherlands and
the Pirate Bay was back up and running within just 3 days.
Not only did the raid not take down the website, but it actually led to more people using the
website.
You see, the police raid became international news, and even the New York Times ran a story
about it.
Aside from driving more users to the website, these news articles fueled an international
movement amongst internet nerds.
One hacker went ahead and hacked into Sweden’s national police website, Polisen.se, and took
down the website.
And, just as the police website was restored, the government website was taken down.
Clearly, these were extremely irresponsible moves, but they definitely made a statement.
Shortly after the raid, the Pirate Bay grew to be the 465th most visited website in the
world, and some lawyers even jumped onto the founders' side.
The lawyers accused the police of unfairly impounding every server in sight during the
raid.
You see, the servers that were impounded weren’t only responsible for running the Pirate Bay,
but also responsible for running dozens of small websites and businesses.
So, police had wronged all these businesses in the name of taking down one website.
The lawyers also argued that the Swedish police didn’t have a justifiable reason to conduct
the raid in the first place.
They accused the Swedish government of giving in to American political pressure instead
of carrying out law and order.
The government of course strongly denied these charges and these cases didn’t really go
anywhere.
But, the government had a nightmare dealing with all this unexpected negative PR.
Initially, they expected that they would be hailed as the heroes fighting against piracy,
but instead, they were made out to be the villains.
The thing is, most people have pirated media or software at some point during their lives.
Statistically, 52% of online users have watched pirated videos even though 59% of users are
aware that downloading and streaming pirated videos is illegal.
And that’s just the people who admitted to it.
As a result, when the news came out that The Pirate Bay had been taken down, it was not
like the average person was jumping up and down in excitement.
The more realistic reaction was probably, oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
Considering this, only a very small portion of people went out of their way to support
the Swedish government’s actions.
And, without large public support, the government couldn’t just raid the Pirate Bay again
cause that would just increase its popularity even more.
So, they decided to address the root by taking down the founders.
ON THE RUN: On April 17, 2009, the three founders Peter,
Fredrik, and Gottfrid as well as the server provider Carl Lundstrom were found guilty
of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to 1 year in prison each.
They were also ordered to pay a fine worth 30 million Swedish kronor or $4.3 million.
The squad appealed the verdict arguing that Sweden gave in to political pressure.
This actually decreased each of their sentences by a few months, but it increased the fine
to 46 million kronor, or $6.6 million.
This didn’t really matter to the founders though, as they had no intention of paying
the fine.
Peter actually held up a sign during the press conference that followed the verdict which
said I owe you 31 million kroner.
He followed up this statement by suggesting that this is all the government was going
to get.
He claimed that he didn’t have any money and even if he did, he’d rather burn everything
and not even give them the ashes.
Carl and Peter didn’t really resist the arrest much further and they simply gave in.
But, the same could not be said about Gottfrid and Fredrik who went on the run.
Gottfrid ran away to Cambodia which had a no extradition policy to Sweden.
But, despite the policy, the Cambodian police arrested Gottfrid on August 30, 2012, and
deported him back to Sweden.
There’s been some speculation that Sweden and Cambodia had an inside deal to extradite
Gottfrid.
Just 6 days after Gottfrid was arrested, the Swedish government announced a 400 million
kroner grant for Cambodia.
So, it is awfully suspicious, but all we can do is speculate.
Once Gottfrid was back in Sweden, he served his jail sentence at the Mariefred prison,
but the police didn’t just stop right there.
They also piled on hacking and fraud charges which led to a total 3-year sentence.
But eventually, in September of 2015, Gottfrid was released.
And finally, as for Fredrik, he was able to evade the police for even longer than Gottfrid.
He had fled to Laos/Thailand and he had built a life in both of these countries.
Honestly, I don’t know why he didn’t just choose one or the other as this dual life
resulted in him crossing the border on a regular basis.
And during one of these border crossings in November of 2014, he was arrested and deported.
Fortunately for Fredrik, his prison sentence was far less severe than Gottfrid’s coming
in at 10 months.
Fredrik actually claims that prison wasn’t even that bad and that it was well worth it
for the Pirate Bay.
Apparently, he was the only one in the prison that was there for a virtual crime.
So, the guards weren’t as tough on him.
He says that he was able to smuggle in USB sticks with movies on them and watch them
on his prison TV.
He did miss his friends and family, but he received dozens of letters from fans of the
Pirate Bay which he says helped him get through the 10 months.
Now, that all of the founders were behind bars, the police could finally shut down the
Pirate Bay once and for all, or so they thought.
UNSTOPPABLE LEGACY: On December 9, 2014, the Swedish police raided
the Pirate Bay once again and impounded all of their servers, computers, and equipment.
With the founders out of the game, this must be the end right?
Well, just 4 days after the Pirate Bay was taken down, a torrent site called Isohunt
launched a website called oldpiratebay.org which mirrored all the content on The Pirate
Bay.
And this is when the prosecutors realized that they had lost the game forever.
Here’s the thing, the Pirate Bay doesn’t actually host any files themselves.
They just connect peers from around the world using links.
So, all the Pirate Bay is storing is links.
The contents of the entire website can be stored within a gigabyte if not less, and
there are thousands of people making copies of the website on a daily basis.
So, even if authorities take down one copy of the site, it’s not very difficult to
upload the gigabyte of data to a new server and get a new domain.
And that’s why it’s impossible to truly take down the Pirate Bay.
Considering this, prosecutors have basically given up on taking down the Pirate Bay as
there’s simply no single person to hold accountable.
In the meantime, copyright holders have shifted their efforts to working with internet service
providers to cut internet to pirates.
But, this has just led to pirates using VPNs.
Anyway, as for the founders today, Peter went ahead and founded a Patreon-type service called
Flattr.
Instead of donating to creators though, the service is used to donate to websites and
projects that better society and reveal corruption like WikiLeaks.
Aside from Flattr, Peter has also given several speeches and interviews regarding his various
views on the world.
Gottfrid and Fredrik on the other hand don’t have nearly as big of a public image.
In fact, they have no public presence, and they simply disappeared into the depths of
the internet.
After Fredrik was released, he said that he was just gonna get an IT job and settle in
Laos.
So, that’s presumably what he’s doing now.
And that’s what happened to the Pirate Bay’s founders and why the Pirate Bay can never
be taken down.
Do you guys think piracy is moral?
Comment that down below.
Also, drop a like if you’ve ever downloaded something that you shouldn’t have.
And of course, consider checking out our international channels to watch our videos in other languages
and consider subscribing to see more questions logically answered.