The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay
Drawing of a 3-masted sailing ship with "Home Taping Is Killing Music" cassette and crossbones
The Pirate Bay logo
Type of site
Torrent index, magnet links provider
Available in35 languages available, primarily English and Swedish
Created by
RevenueAdvertisements, donations
URLthepiratebay.org
RegistrationOptional, open, free
Launched15 September 2003; 21 years ago (2003-09-15)
Current statusOnline
Written inHTML, JavaScript, and PHP
Part of a series on
File sharing
Technologies
Video on demand sites
BitTorrent sites
Academic/scholarly
File sharing networks
P2P clients
Streaming programs
Anonymous file sharing
Development and societal aspects
By country or region
Comparisons

The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a freely searchable online index of movies, music, video games, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection among users of the peer-to-peer torrent protocol, which are able to contribute to the site through the addition of magnet links. The Pirate Bay has consistently ranked as one of the most visited torrent websites in the world.[1][2][3]

The website has faced several server raids, shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.[4] In multiple countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to it. Subsequently, proxy websites have emerged to circumvent the blocks.[5][6][7][8][9]

In April 2009, the website's founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm were found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement and were sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine.[10] They were all released by 2015 after serving shortened sentences.[4]

The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws as well as a central figure in an anti-copyright movement.[11]

  1. ^ "Top Sites in: Torrent Directories and Trackers". Alexa. 29 April 2012. Archived from the original on 29 April 2012. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  2. ^ Van der Sar, Ernesto (14 August 2016). "Pirate Bay is The King of Torrents Once Again". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 7 January 2019. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
  3. ^ "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites 2024". Torrent Freak. Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference theguardian June 2, 2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Van der Sar, Ernesto (22 December 2012). "Pirate Bay Censorship Backfires as New Proxies Bloom". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 22 April 2014.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference guardian_raid was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Moscaritolo, Angela (8 December 2014). "Pirate Bay Apps Yanked From Google Play". PC Magazine. Archived from the original on 12 January 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  8. ^ "The Pirate Bay 'breaches' BT's ban of the filesharing site". BBC News. 22 June 2012. Archived from the original on 24 March 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  9. ^ Dredge, Stuart (12 August 2013). "Pirate Bay launches own PirateBrowser to evade ISP filesharing blocks". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 January 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  10. ^ Ricknäs, Mikael (11 March 2010). "Pirate Bay Appeals Looks Set to Start in September". PC World. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jessica L. Beyer.p.65 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).