The Pirate Bay
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The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is an Internet site that bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker," and also serves as an index for BitTorrent files (.torrent) that it tracks.
The Pirate Bay was started by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån ('The Pirate Bureau') in early 2004, but since October 2004 it has been a separate organization. The site is currently run by Gottfrid "Anakata" Svartholm and Fredrik "TiAMO" Neij. As strong opponents of copyrights, they have coined the term, kopimist, from the root kopimi, meaning copy-me. [[1]
They have also joined together with other kopimist groups such as the Armed Coalition Forces of the Internets (ACFI) to promote the anti-copyright philosophy through various political actions. [2]
[edit] The search for a Copyfree Homeland
In January 2007 Pirate Bay attempted to purchase Sealand, a man-made off-shore installation named HM Fort Roughs that claims to be an independent state, in order to circumvent international copyright laws. The Pirate Bay made the announcement, “With the help of all the kopimists on Internets, we want to buy Sealand. Donate money and you will become a citizen and nobleman.", on their buy Sealand website, http://buysealand.com/. The beginnings of Sealand shared some philosophic beliefs with kopimist when they started a pirate radio station. Sealand still remains free of most copyright laws or internet restrictions.
The Pirate Bay so far have have raised over 20,000$US, however the goal ultimately failed. On interview on the CBC's The Hour, Royal Highness Prince Michael of Sealand stated that buying Sealand is probably a good way to circumvent international copyright law, but that he won’t sell Sealand to the Pirate Bay.
[edit] External links
- The Pirate Bay (official site)
- Piratbyrån in English - The Piratbyrån news blog
- buysealand.com Site set up to raise money to buy Sealand
[edit] Related to the raid May 2006
- 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, ThePirateBay Strikes Back, Aftermath of The Pirate Raids, The Pirate Bay Back Online
- The Pirate Bay Raided: Exclusive Interview
- Police website under attack
- Police website exposed to overload attack
- 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 with "Peter", one of the TPB maintainers, Chaosradio podcast
- Photos from the demonstration, Mynttorget, 2 3
