Everyone loves free things, some love it more than others. Today, the “Pirate Bay”, a notorious website which has taken over the world. Known for its defiance and fame in the world of piracy and distribution of digital media.
Some of you may already know the Pirate Bay, considering how Netflix is raising their prices once more.
FORE-WORD: This article contains information that can be perceived as immoral or illegal, this article is providing this information purely for educational purposes and does not condone criminal actions. Please do your own research if you do act upon this information.
The Pirate Bay in itself is a simple concept: a website that allows people to share content without limiting or restricting anything. The website allows people to distribute content via a P2P system (peer-to-peer), which works by sharing content not directly but via other people sharing it simultaneously (video explanation here). Users of the Pirate Bay primarily use the P2P system to distribute and share movies and TV shows without having to pay a single cent. This, of course, is a legal issue for many, as piracy entails a breach of copyright laws. That never stopped the Pirate Bay or its users. Since 2003, the Pirate Bay has been subject to a wide variety of ups and downs that we’ll look at in more detail.
The Pirate Bay was founded on the 15th of September 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization named “Piratbyrån.” However, in October 2004, it became its own individual organization. Considering the questionable legality of the Pirate Bay website, hosting the website was quite a complicated task. At first, the website was hosted on PRQ servers, PRQ being a large “no-questions-asked” web hosting service. Google reported that over 6’000 formal complaints were made, and a total of 80’500 URLs were demanded to be removed from the Google search engine. In December 2014, the Swedish Police raided the Pirate Bay offices, bringing the website down. The Pirate Bay promptly re-appeared to the internet 3 days later; users who had made copies of the Pirate Bay index set up alternative websites that provided the same content. The Pirate Bay admins had and still have a strong bias toward the distribution of copyrighted content. When large media corporations emailed them with cease and desist letters demanding their website to be shut down, the admins replied with strong emotions. This is a copy of the admin’s reply to Dreamworks (MATURE CONTENT WARNING).
Even though the concept of the Pirate Bay website seems simple, the technology is quite complex. P2P systems work by sharing a file between multiple users at the same time. Seeders are users that share the file to others, these seeders already have the content and send the content when a new peer requests the files. Peers are users that are not particularly active, they are present on the network but don’t share the files.
However, piracy in Switzerland is an interesting subject. The Swiss Law contains a document named CopA. According to the interpretation of this legal document by Digitec, the laws in Switzerland dictate that “published works may be used for private use” under the condition that “any personal use of a work or use within a circle of persons closely connected to each other, such as relatives or friends.” Digitec also claims that these restrictions apply to e-books, films, or shows. One important detail is that the Swiss law code explicitly states that downloading copyrighted material is legal, but uploading copyrighted material is illegal. This affects how legal the Pirate Bay is because the P2P network functions by uploading and downloading a file at the same time.
All in all, the Pirate Bay website and organization have an interesting story and an incredibly large community. No matter the legality of the website, I commend the efforts that the community has made in order to protect their motives. I suggest you do some research of your own if you want to really understand the whole matter, I recommend the 92nd episode of Darknet Diaries (available on any major streaming service).
Links for future reference:
Swiss copyright law: what can and can’t I download? – Digitec
SR 231.1 – Federal Act of 9 October 1992 on Copyright and…
SR 231.1 – Federal Act of 9 October 1992 on Copyright and…
Pirate Bay response to legal threats from DreamWorks : r/Damnthatsinteresting
The Pirate Bay – Darknet Diaries
The Pirate Bay | History & Facts | Britannica
Sources:
