The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay
Drawing of a 3-masted sailing ship with 'Home Taping Is Killing Music' cassette & 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, merchandise, cryptocurrency mining
URLthepiratebay.org
RegistrationOptional, free
Launched15 September 2003 (2003-09-15)
Current statusOnline
Written inHTML, JavaScript, and PHP

The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software.[1] Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

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.[2] The website has faced several shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.[3]

In April 2009, the website's founders (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, 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.[4] In some countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxy websites have been providing access to it.[5][6][7][8][9] Founders Svartholm, Neij, and Sunde were all released by 2015 after serving shortened sentences.[3]

  1. ^ "Pirate Bay hit with legal action". BBC News. 31 January 2008. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Jessica L. Beyer.p.65 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference theguardian June 2, 2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Ricknäs, Mikael (11 March 2010). "Pirate Bay Appeals Looks Set to Start in September". PC World. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016.
  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.