[Infowarrior] - Internet celebrates 2 years of futility battling Pirate Bay

[Richard Forno]

Internet celebrates 2 years of futility battling Pirate Bay

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 01, 2008 - 07:17PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080601-internet-celebrates-2-years-of-futility-battling-pirate-bay.html

Over the weekend, The Pirate Bay "celebrated" its second anniversary  
of being raided by the Swedish police. On May 31, 2006, law  
enforcement seized all of the popular torrent tracker's servers and  
backups, and arrested two of the site's operators. The site didn't  
stay down for long, though—just a few days later, everything was  
business as usual for The Pirate Bay. A court date in Sweden has yet  
to be set, and support for the site appears to be stronger than ever.

Since the raids, the predictable has happened: the site's popularity  
has exploded. The Pirate Bay says that its number of Bit Torrent peers  
has grown from 2.5 million to over 12 million, and that registered  
users have grown from 1 million to 2.7 million. The tracker is more  
popular than ever, and continues to grow every day. "It's awesome to  
see the support the community show us. Even in our bad moments, we get  
your support," said the Pirate Bay's admins in the posting.

The general reaction across the Internet is quite positive—and largely  
pro Pirate Bay. Commenters on the Pirate Bay's blog post, Digg, and  
swaths of other blog entries are almost unanimous in their support of  
the site and its goal of remaining online and operational.  
TorrentFreak even named the anniversary "Happy Pirates independence  
day."

Many believe that the Swedish police acted inappropriately when they  
seized the Pirate Bay's servers, that the police had it in for Pirate  
Bay before the raid even happened, and that the reason things are  
taking so long to go to court is because law enforcement can't find  
any useful evidence.

Of course, not everyone is a friend of the Pirate Bay. The motion  
picture and movie industries are at war with the site and want it  
taken down for good. The International Federation of the Phonographic  
Industry is one of its most determined foes, battling the pirates last  
year over a domain issue and then suing the four main backers for 15  
million kroner ($2.5 million) for violating the copyrights on a number  
of films, PC games, and music. The Motion Picture Association of  
America has also slapped the site with a claim for $15.4 million in  
damages for facilitating copyright infringement. The Pirate Bay isn't  
exactly known for taking these threats seriously, however, and  
recently declared that "the record companies can go screw themselves."

So, will The Pirate Bay continue to be a safe haven for illicit  
content in the months and years ahead? It certainly appears so at this  
point. Industry trade groups trumpeted the 2006 raids as a major  
victory and claimed that the site had been permanently dismantled, but  
subsequent events have demonstrated that those celebrations were  
extremely premature.

Even if the Pirate Bay were eventually taken down, it would live on in  
the thousands of other torrent trackers that users would divert their  
attention to. In fact, the Internet's reaction just highlights the  
futility of Big Content's efforts to take down sites like the Pirate  
Bay in the first place and why the focus has turned towards deep  
packet inspection, throttling, and filtering. People love their  
BitTorrent and will continue to use it—with or without the Pirate Bay.