When The Pirate Bay first came online, in the second half of 2003 , the ‘internet’ looked nothing like it does today.

A Harvard student had yet to start writing the first lines of code on a new idea, called “TheFacebook”. YouTube wasn’t around yet either, and the same was true for the smartphones that dominate people’s lives today.

At the time, all popular entertainment was consumed offline. People interested in watching a movie could use the Internet to buy a DVD at one of the early webshops, or sign up with Netflix, which shipped discs through the mail. However, on-demand access was simply not a thing. At least, not legally.

Things were changing though. Napster had made it clear that the Internet had the potential to offer music to the masses, albeit illegally. And with BitTorrent technology, The Pirate Bay expanded this ‘free library’ to various other media types, including TV shows and movies.

Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent

Today, more than two decades have passed and most of the files shared on The Pirate Bay in the early years are no longer available. BitTorrent requires at least one person to share a full file copy, which is hard to keep up for decades.

Surprisingly, however, several torrents have managed to stand the test of time and remain available today. A few days ago the site’s longest surviving torrent turned 20 years old.

While a few candidates have shown up over the years, we believe that an episode of “ High Chaparral ” has the honor of being the oldest Pirate Bay torrent that’s still active today. The file was originally uploaded on March 25, 2004, and several people continue to share it today.

The screenshot above only lists one seeder but according to information passed on by OpenTrackr.org, there are four seeders with a full copy. This is quite a remarkable achievement, especially since people complained about a lack of seeders shortly after it was uploaded.

Cult Status

Over the years, the “High Chaparral” torrent achieved cult status among a small group of people who likely keep sharing it, simply because it’s the oldest surviving torrent. This became evident in the Pirate Bay comment section several years ago, when TPB still had comments.

“Well, i guess since this is a part of TPB history i’ll add it to my Raspberry Pi torrent server to seed forever,” zak0403 wrote.

Revolution OS & The Fanimatrix

Record or not, other old torrents on The Pirate Bay also continue to thrive. On March 31, 2004, someone uploaded a pirated copy of the documentary “ Revolution OS ” to the site which is alive and kicking today.

“Revolution OS” covers the history of Linux, GNU, and the free software movement, which was a good fit for the early Pirate Bay crowd. Eleven years ago, we spoke to director J.T.S. Moore, who wasn’t pleased that people were pirating the documentary but was nevertheless glad to see it hadn’t lost its appeal.

Fast-forward to the present day and Revolution OS still has plenty of interest, with more than 30 people actively seeding the torrent.

While these torrents are quite old, they’re not the oldest active torrents available on the Internet. That honor goes to “The Fanimatrix” , which was created in September 2003 and, after being previously resurrected, continues to be available today with more than 100 people seeding.

Ten years ago, we were surprised to see that any of the mentioned torrents were still active. By now, however, we wouldn’t be shocked to see these torrents survive for decades. Whether The Pirate Bay will still be around then is another question.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

When pirated copies of “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” came out nearly two decades ago, The Pirate Bay changed its front page logo.

The Pirate Bay became the “Grand Theft Bay,” illustrating the deviant stance upon which the site built its reputation since the year of its launch .

The GTA-inspired logo was the first of many ‘doodles’ that separated the ‘most resilient torrent site’ from its competition. Instead of hiding from law enforcement or big media’s anti-piracy groups, The Pirate Bay often went on the offensive, facing all challenges head-on.

Many believed it was revolutionary, while others thought it was naive. What’s clear, however, is that The Pirate Bay fulfilled an unmet source of demand.

Pirating Pioneers

At the time, it was nearly impossible for people to consume media online. Music streaming services simply didn’t exist yet, games were sold wrapped in plastic, and Netflix had yet to start its streaming business. Meanwhile, everything was available on The Pirate Bay, for free.

Times have changed but even the most staunch pro-copyright advocates can’t deny that piracy helped to lead the entertainment industries to new business models. Without the Napsters , Limewires and Pirate Bays of the time, media consumption wouldn’t have evolved so swiftly.

There is no award for this accomplishment, however. On the contrary, the public faces of The Pirate Bay’s founding crew all served prison sentences. Hollywood never managed to bring the site completely to its knees, but did make its founding fathers pay with life’s most precious asset: TIME .

Intriguingly, The Pirate Bay story itself now serves as inspiration for a TV production. B-Reel Films started working on a Pirate Bay TV series for Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT a few years ago

None of the Pirate Bay founders are closely involved in the TV project, and they’re certainly not being compensated either. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet.

Filming Finished

The new Pirate Bay series is scheduled to be released on Swedish television later this year. It has just finished filming and the first images, as well as the leading characters, were recently revealed to the public.

The production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.

Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story; there are many rabbit holes to pursue after all. Director Jens Sjögren describes it as a thriller, albeit one with humor.

“The Pirate Bay is a character-driven thriller told with great heart, warmth, nerve, will, and humor that takes us from a basement in the suburbs to fancy offices in Hollywood. A story about how a spark in a student corridor takes off and risks setting fire to the entire establishment far away in Hollywood,” Sjögren says.

Global Release Uncertain

With millions of former and current users of the torrent site, there will likely be some interest in the series from an international audience too. Thus far, no deals have been announced and, at this point, it’s uncertain if the series will be available outside of Sweden this fall.

Dynamic Television has acquired the global distribution rights to the series. Speaking with TorrentFreak, publicist Marylou Johnston says that the series is now going post-production so it is “way too early” to report any international sales.

“International sales will start when we can show the series to potential buyers. I doubt we will have a global release but it could happen,” Johnston notes.

Needless to say, selling a TV series to Hollywood, one that documents the history of its arch-enemy, is an intriguing proposition. While film insiders are smart enough to recognize potential when they see it, there’s a certain barrier to overcome.

You Can’t Stop Pirates?

Ironically, if The Pirate Bay series isn’t made available globally, people might be incentivized to download a copy from The Pirate Bay instead. That would show that, despite being declared illegal a long time ago, the site still fills demand today.

If anything, The Pirate Bay’s history has shown that it’s impossible to stop people from pirating. The people involved are not oblivious to this fact either. However, it’s no different from all other productions they’re working on and Johnston doesn’t expect that piracy will hurt sales.

“We can never guarantee that some ‘pirate’ version is not going to circulate but that applies to every show! Thankfully it doesn’t affect sales,” she explains

There are ways to minimize piracy, of course. A worldwide premiere on a streaming service, for example. If people can watch the series legally on a service they already subscribe to, there’s less incentive to go to The Pirate Bay; sentiment aside.

While this sounds simple; making it happen isn’t easy.

Global releases are still a rarity today for content owned by a third party, which typically sells it to the highest bidder. These negotiations take time and, in some cases, the offers simply aren’t good enough.

In theory, a globally operating streaming service could pick the show up, either this year or after its Swedish premiere.

It would be truly revolutionary if all streaming services licensed the show at the same time, making it available everywhere and to everyone; Pirate Bay style. That utopian vision is probably a bit naive though.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

During the summer of 2003, Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån was making a name for itself; sharing news and educating people on how they could share media online.

What the group’s members didn’t realize at the time, is that the plans they made would create a ripple effect that still has an impact decades later.

Like many other people mesmerized by the unbridled ability to share files over the Internet, the new BitTorrent protocol caught Piratbyrån’s eye. From one thing came another, and Piratbyrån decided to start their own tracker.

A Swedish Torrent Tracker

When this idea was first brought up isn’t clear, not even to the site’s founders, but at the end of 2003 The Pirate Bay was presented to the public.

“We have opened a BitTorrent tracker – The Pirate Bay. From there, you can download and share games, movies, discs, TV shows and more,” the short announcement reads , translated from Swedish.

One of the group’s unwritten goals was to offer a counterweight to the propaganda being spread by local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyrån. The pro-culture group saw sharing as something positive instead, and a file-sharing website would surely bring this point across.

The Pirate Bay first came online in Mexico where Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time.

After a few months, the site moved to Sweden where it was hosted on a Pentium III 1GHz laptop with 256MB RAM. This one machine, which belonged to Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, kept the site online and included a fully operational tracker.

This early setup was quite primitive, as shown here , and some of the hardware was later put on display at the Computer Museum in Linköping.

Piratbyrån initially planned to create the first public file-sharing network in Sweden but, in the years that followed, the site grew out to become a global file-sharing icon.

While The Pirate Bay team was proud of this success, it was not without consequences. Initially, various takedown messages from copyright holders were met with mocking responses, but the legal pressure became a heavy burden.

Behind the scenes, the US Government applied pressure on Sweden , urging the country do something about the taunting pirate site. At the same time, the site’s founders noticed that they were being shadowed by private investigators, who smelled blood.

The Raid

The pressure eventually reached its first peak when The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure was raided.

May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The policemen had instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay’s servers, and that’s exactly what they did.

For most pirate sites the road would end there, but The Pirate Bay was no ordinary site, and it wasn’t planning to cave in just yet.

Shortly before the raid began, Gottfrid noticed some unusual activity. He warned Fredrik who, as a precaution, decided to make a backup. This turned out to be a pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup, Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days.

Instead of hiding in the shadows, Pirate Bay’s spokesperson Peter Sunde, aka Brokep, told the world that The Pirate Bay wasn’t going anywhere.

This swift and defiant comeback turned the site’s founders into heroes for many. The site made headline news around the world and in Stockholm, people were waving pirate flags in the streets, a sentiment that benefited the newly founded Pirate Party as well.

The Turning Point

There was also a major downside, however. The raid was the start of a criminal investigation, which led to a spectacular trial, and prison sentences for several of the site’s founders.

This became another turning point. Many of the early Piratbyrån members cut their ties with the site. Gottfrid, Fredrik and Peter also left the ship, which was handed over to a more anonymous group ostensibly located in the Seychelles.

The outspokenness of the early years eventually gave way to the silent treatment. While the site’s moderators are easy to reach nowadays, the people (Winston) who pull the strings at the top remain behind the scenes at all times.

This was made quite obvious when the site disappeared for weeks following another raid at a Stockholm datacenter in 2014 . At the time, even the site’s staffers had no idea what was going on.

The Pirate Bay eventually recovered from this second raid too, but by then something had clearly changed. The torrent site now seems content with just being there.

Over the years the site simplified its setup by removing the tracker, introducing magnet links , and further decentralizing its setup. The ability to comment was also sacrificed at some point, and user registrations were closed for years, although there’s some progress on that front now.

The Mods and Admins

Today’s manual user registrations are processed by a dedicated moderator team, which also ensures that the site remains free of spam and malware. This team of volunteers is separate from the site’s ‘operator’ and many have been in that role for over a decade.

Earlier today, Pirate Bay admin Spud17 posted a message in the Pirate Bay forum to celebrate the 20th anniversary.

“Most of the current TPB Crew have been here for well over 10 years, many for much, much longer, and we’re proud to be associated with the world’s most iconic torrent site,” she notes.

“We volunteer our time freely to help keep the site clean, nuking the fakes and malware to kingdom come, and help edit/move/delete torrents as and when uploaders request help in the forum’s Account Issues subforum.”

Crypto Miner and Token

After two decades, TPB still manages to make headlines on occasion. For example, when yet another country orders Internet providers to block the site, or when it suddenly decides to ‘deploy’ its users to mine cryptocurrency .

The last major project was announced in 2021 when The Pirate Bay released its very own ‘crypto’ token out of the blue. There was no official whitepaper for these PirateTokens, but the torrent site envisioned the ‘coin’ being used to access VIP content or donate to uploaders.

These plans never came to fruition and the token price soon entered a freefall . After a few months, the official token announcement disappeared from the site as well, leaving token holders with worthless digital memorabilia.

The Pirate Bay itself isn’t going anywhere it seems. The events listed above are really just a fraction of events spanning 20 extraordinary years. The question now is whether the site will survive until its 25th anniversary.

—

Note: The 20-year anniversary logo was created by theSEMAR.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

As one of the most notorious torrent sites, The Pirate Bay has been blocked by ISPs around the world.

In response to these digital roadblocks, several proxy sites have sprung up to bypass these restrictions. Besides that, there are dedicated sites that help people to find these backdoors.

The Proxy Bay

“The Proxy Bay” has long been one of the leading information portals. The site didn’t offer an official proxy itself but provided an overview of available options. As such, it proved to be quite useful in countries where site blockades are active.

In the UK, for example, where TPB has been blocked for over a decade, the site was particularly popular.

Since the blocking orders often allow rightsholders to add newly appearing proxies, this has turned into a game of whack-a-mole. When proxies are blocked, new domains are launched, which are then picked up by pirates through information portals such as The Proxy Bay.

GitHub Takedown Saga

This routine has been a major source of frustration for rightsholders. It reached the point where some of these linking sites were banned, and when City of London Police got involved in the matter earlier this year, it was clear that things were getting more serious.

It’s quite something when the police actively get involved in a copyright matter. In this case, it was particularly salient since “The Proxy Bay” was hosted at GitHub.

The developer platform swiftly complied with the takedown request, which wasn’t unexpected. However, after someone representing the proxy information site sent a counter notice , the domain was restored .

The brief takedown in January hurt the site’s traffic but, when it came back a month later, business resumed as usual. According to SimilarWeb, the site had 1.5 million visits again in March, which is quite a lot for a GitHub hosted page.

Mystery Disappearance(s)

The GitHub restoral was a significant victory for The Proxy Bay. Ironically, City of London Police’s takedown efforts may have actually raised the site’s profile, running contrary to the initial goal.

There was no celebration, however; quite the opposite in fact. A few weeks after its comeback the site quietly disappeared. Those who try to access the domain today will get a 404 error. This means that the site is gone, but why remains a mystery.

In theory, there could have been another takedown request but since there isn’t one documented by GitHub, that seems unlikely. The other option is that the owner of the page voluntarily removed it, perhaps spooked by the police taking an interest.

The latter explanation would run contrary to the counternotice sent earlier. However, it’s not clear if that was actually sent by the operator, especially since the notice referenced the incorrect .com domain name, instead of the .io one that GitHub pages use.

Rinse… and Repeat

Interestingly, all proxy domains that were previously promoted on The Proxy Bay have gone offline as well. These domains include unlockedtpb.org, thepiratebayone.com, and tpbproxy.info. The same is true for thepirateproxybay.com, which hosted the information on the same page as The Proxy Bay.

All these mystery disappearances, taking place shortly after the police takedown request, are at least unusual.

This doesn’t mean that there’s a shortage of proxies, though, new ones pop up all the time; also on GitHub ( 1 , 2 , 3 , etc ). This game of whack-a-mole has been ongoing for more than a decade and it’s unlikely to end anytime soon.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Pirate Bay has been around for nearly two decades, which is quite an achievement considering the immense legal pressure it has faced over the years.

Swedish police tried to shut the site down , twice, raiding dozens of servers. This ultimate goal failed but local authorities did prosecute the site’s three co-founders, who all served time in prison for their involvement.

The notorious torrent site stood tall in the midst of this turmoil and continues to operate from thepiratebay.org until this day. While it is no longer the largest piracy site online, anti-piracy forces haven’t forgotten about it.

Pirate Bay Targeted in New Subpoena Wave

This week, we spotted yet another attempt to uncover the current operators. Through the Motion Picture Association, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) requested a DMCA subpoena at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

These subpoenas are not uncommon and are typically directed at third-party intermediaries, Cloudflare in this case. The Pirate Bay is a Cloudflare customer and through the court, ACE requests all useful information the California company has on its illustrious client.

“The subpoena requires that you provide information concerning the individuals offering infringing material described in the attached notice,” ACE informs Cloudflare.

“[Y]ou are required to disclose […] information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history.”

These DMCA subpoenas don’t require any judicial oversight. In most cases, they are swiftly signed off by a court clerk. The legal paperwork is then sent to Cloudflare, which typically replies with all relevant information it has on file.

Actionable Intel?

Whether this will result in any useful information for ACE is hard to tell. The Pirate Bay knows all too well that these subpoenas exist so likely anticipated this request. After all, ACE targeted the site with a similar request three years ago.

In addition to The Pirate Bay, ACE subpoenas target a variety of other domain names as well. These include thesoap2day.com, cuevana2.biz, seriesflix.is, and more than a dozen others.

The domain tor.cat appears to be an odd entry, as that’s merely a redirect to a .onion domain on the dark web. The .onion domain belongs to DonTorrent, which previously taunted ACE by listing the anti-piracy coalition’s boss Jan Van Voorn as the site’s owner.

Van Voorn and his team hope that their new subpoena requests will help to pinpoint the owners of the listed sites. While results are not guaranteed, this strategy has proven to be effective in the past, at least in some cases.

“Disclosure requests have been a very effective way for ACE to expand its investigations,” Van Voorn previously told us.

“Through these processes we target all relevant intermediaries that have customer information that can help us identify the operator of a pirate site or service, including hosting providers, payment processors, advertising networks, etcetera.”

Fabricated Data

The information in Cloudflare’s administration isn’t always useful. Many operators of pirate sites and services use fabricated or inaccurate details to sign up, but ACE says that it often gets something useful out of it.

“While the information obtained does not always instantly identify the individual running a pirate operation, there are almost always leads we can follow that either give us investigative insights or that help confirm prior suspicions.”

Even if the information turns out to be useless for direct enforcement purposes, it can still prove helpful. After all, it can help ACE to argue that online intermediaries should have stricter Know Your Business Customer (KYBC) requirements.

—

Copies of the subpoena requests filed this week are available here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ). A full list of all the mentioned domain names is available below.

– thesoap2day.com
– tor.cat
– thepiratebay.org
– cuevana2.biz
– cuevana3.ai
– cuevana3.mu
– compucalitv.com
– seriesflix.is
– filmisub.com
– filmi7.com
– fmoviesfree.to
– topflix.fm
– filmeshdtorrent.com
– photocall.tv
– multicanais.vc
– megacamais.com
– furiaflix.net
– moviehdapkdownload.com
– download.teatvapkdownload.com
– tv.tvzon.tv

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Two years ago, reports began to surface about a new six-part TV-series on The Pirate Bay’s turbulent history.

The project was initially scheduled to start last year but after an apparent delay, filming is now expected to begin this fall.

Pirate Bay TV Series

The inception and early years of The Pirate Bay are definitely a worthy subject for a series. While most pirate sites hid in the shadows, Pirate Bay’s founders were public figures, who openly taunted the entertainment industries.

Speaking with Variety , head-writer Piotr Marciniak explains that his screenplay is based on a wealth of archive material as well as interviews with the site’s founders.

“It’s a classic rise and fall story, a tragedy about flying too close to the sun, but also a timeless story of a generational conflict,” Marcimiak said.

The people involved in the “The Pirate Bay” series are clearly looking forward to getting the project running. The production is in the hands of B-Reel Films , working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT, while the American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights.

Selling The Pirate Bay ‘Rights’

Indeed, the rights to The Pirate Bay series are actively traded. The same will likely happen to pirated copies of the episodes when they’re illicitly posted to The Pirate Bay, but it’s unclear whether the rightsholders have plans to crack down on unauthorized sharing.

It’s nonetheless interesting to read that the story about a site that rebelled against the exploitation of copyrights, is being copyrighted and sold off. Would The Pirate Bay founders approve of that? Are they even involved?

The Pirate Bay series aims to tell the history of the notorious pirate site and co-founders Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Gottfrid Svartholm, but none appear to be actively involved.

Founders Deny Involvement

TorrentFreak spoke with both Sunde and Neij, who both confirm they were not interviewed for the upcoming series, even though it aims to document an important and hectic part of their lives.

“Nope, they didn’t interview me for the TV series,” Fredrik says. “Also. I’m not sure who they bought the rights from… They didn’t pay me at least.”

“And I know Anakata would have had nothing to do with it,” Fredrik adds, referring to co-founder Gottfrid, who prefers to live his life away from the public spotlight in recent years.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde previously said that he was flattered by the idea of a Pirate Bay series, adding that it’s also a bit nerve-wracking. This week, however, Sunde confirmed that he is in no way involved either.

Pirate Bay’s co-founder actually discussed the TV project idea with the show’s writer Piotr Marciniak a few years ago but declined to sell his story. Instead, he was, and still is, working on a potentially competing film project.

Later on, Sunde also met with the series’ director and someone from the production company B-Reel Films, who told him that they had no one from the Pirate Bay team who wanted to cooperate. That didn’t convince him to change his mind, however.

F*ck Off

As mentioned earlier, the Variety piece mentions that the upcoming Pirate Bay series draws from key interviews with Sunde and Svartholm. However, the Pirate Bay co-founder says that he wasn’t interviewed for the series.

“I have not given any deep interview, and when I met with them they said that Gottfrid had told them to fuck off. Which sounds more true to his character..,” Peter Sunde tells us.

We also reached out to B-Reel Films to hear their side of the story, but the company didn’t immediately reply. However, based on the comments from Sunde and Neij it is safe to conclude that they are not in any way involved.

Of course, the rightsholders of The Pirate Bay TV series are free to send some of the revenues to the founders of the site, who ultimately paid for their ideals with their freedom . Sunde doesn’t expect to get paid anytime soon, however.

“Movie studios moved to Hollywood since they didn’t want to pay for stories. They were the original pirates,” Sunde says.

“It’s been ironic to see them going after pirates in court for years and even more ironic to see them pirate the pirate story. Hoping it will turn out nice so I can pirate a copy of it. Maybe I’ll get sued for downloading the story about us.”

Update April 8:

Fredrik Heinig, founder and managing partner of B-Reel Films was kind enough to clear up that, indeed, none of the TPB founders were interviewed in detail for the series. The production team did speak to several people who were close to TPB, as well as its adversaries.

“We interviewed more than 20 people around and in TPB, Piratbyrån, and Antipiratbyrån for our project,” Heinig says.

“Piotr talked to Peter and I and the director Jens met and spoke to Peter in Malmö, I have also talked to him two more times on the phone, but Peter never wanted to do a deep interview, as you know has ambitions to tell his story in a film by himself. Piotr met Gottfrid and had a very short talk.”

“We tried to reach both Gottfrid and Fredrik for longer interviews without any luck. So it’s a misunderstanding from Variety to say that our series is based on interviews with the founders, it’s based on heavy research and interviews with people around them and others.”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

By now, various courts around the world have concluded that The Pirate Bay is a copyright-infringing website.

In response to various court orders over the years, the notorious torrent site was blocked by dozens of ISPs all around the world. That’s also the case in the UK, where The Pirate Bay was added to the local piracy blocklist over a decade ago .

These blocking efforts triggered the rise of hundreds of Pirate Bay proxy sites. While many of these were subsequently blocked, new ones continue to pop up, as do sites that provide an overview of the latest working proxies.

“The Proxy Bay” falls in the latter category. It provides links to the latest Pirate Bay proxies and also shares information on how people can start a proxy of their own. While rightsholders don’t like this type of information being shared, there are no links to copyrighted material on the site.

Proxy Blocking

The lack of infringing content hasn’t stopped local music group BPI from pursuing legal action. As part of the original Pirate Bay blockade, thepirateproxybay.com and many similar sites are blocked by UK ISPs. Voluntarily complying with the same ruling, Google followed suit by deindexing whole domains.

One domain managed to escape these blocking actions; proxybay.github.com. This GitHub subdomain is a copy of thepirateproxybay.com and appears to be operated by the same people, but it’s not blocked by UK ISPs.

Interestingly, we did spot the site on an advertising blacklist maintained by City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU). In our article from a few months ago, we questioned why the police couldn’t have taken an easier route by sending a DMCA notice.

‘Criminal’ GitHub Subdomain

Fast forward to 2023 and PIPCU has decided to take up the matter on behalf of music group BPI. Police sent a takedown request to the Microsoft-owned company, alerting it to the alleged criminal activity taking place on its domain.

“This site is in breach of UK law, namely Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988, Offences under the Fraud Act 2006 and Conspiracy to Defraud,” PIPCU writes.

“Suspension of the domain(s) is intended to prevent further crime. Where possible we request that domain suspension(s) are made within 48 hours of receipt of this Alert,” the notice adds.

This takedown request was honored by GitHub, meaning that people who try to access the domain now get a 404 error instead.

Muddying the Waters

While GitHub’s swift response is understandable, it’s worth pointing out how these blocking efforts are evolving and expanding, far beyond blocking the original Pirate Bay site.

The Proxy Bay doesn’t link to infringing content directly. The site links to other proxy sites which serve up the Pirate Bay homepage. From there, users may search for or browse torrent links that, once loaded, can download infringing content.

Does this mean that simply linking to The Pirate Bay can be considered a crime in itself? If that’s the case, other sites such as Wikipedia and Bing are in trouble too.

A more reasonable middle ground would be to consider the intent of a site. The Proxy Bay was launched to facilitate access to The Pirate Bay, which makes court orders less effective. In 2015 UK ISPs began blocking proxy and proxy indexing sites, so that explains why thepirateproxybay.com and others are regularly blocked.

Whether this constitutes criminal activity is ultimately for the court to decide, not the police. In this regard, it’s worth noting that City of London Police previously arrested the alleged operator of a range of torrent site proxies.

The then 20-year-old defendant, who also developed censorship circumvention tool Immunicity, was threatened with a hefty prison sentence but the court disagreed and dismissed the case .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Last year, we noticed that Google had delisted several popular pirate sites from its search results in some countries.

In the Netherlands, for example, The Pirate Bay and many of its mirrors and proxies were delisted by Google in response to a notice sent by local anti-piracy group BREIN.

Later, we learned that similar requests were being sent to Google by movie company representatives in other countries . In response, Google removed thousands of URLs from its search engine in countries such as France, Norway, and the UK . In all cases, the domains were already blocked by ISPs following a court order.

Google’s Blocking Reversal

Google’s decision to voluntarily take action is noteworthy. The company apparently removed thousands of ‘pirate site’ domain names without being named in a lawsuit and despite earlier objections to this type of whole-site blocking, of which it doubted the efficacy.

The search engine has clearly changed its views, much to the delight of rightsholders. That said, Google still needs a nudge to spring into action. In the UK, for example, The Pirate Bay remained in Google’s search engine while hundreds of smaller sites were delisted .

Initially, it wasn’t clear why The Pirate Bay remained unblocked but, in hindsight, the explanation appears to be quite straightforward.

The blocking notices that were sent to Google came from the UK law firm Wiggins, which works for the movie industry. The Pirate Bay blocking order, however, was obtained by the music groups BPI and PPL . Apparently, these groups hadn’t sprung into action yet.

BPI/PPL Ask Google to Delist Pirate Bay URLs

In recent weeks the UK music groups got on the bandwagon. The first request , sent by BPI and PPL, asked Google to delist the main Thepiratebay.org URL from its search results and the company swiftly complied.

Since then, several other requests have come in, targeting hundreds of Pirate Bay proxies. For example, earlier this month a BPI/PPL notice identified 486 additional blocking targets , although half of these appear to be duplicated. A week earlier, a similar notice targeted 73 ‘Pirate Bay’ URLs.

As a result of these actions, it’s now harder to find Pirate Bay proxies through Google. And indeed, a simple search for The Pirate Bay in the UK now comes with a notice at the bottom of the results, indicating that several URLs were removed in response to a legal request.

The BPI informs us that it already asked Google to delist The Pirate Bay when the first blocking order was obtained in 2012. At the time, Google declined to do so but the search engine eventually changed its tune.

“Things have moved on a bit since then and Google is now prepared to delist sites which are the subject of Court Orders,” a BPI spokesperson informed us.

“It’s been a long time coming, and clearly not everyone uses Google to find infringing sites, but we are pleased that the biggest search engine in the world is now taking these steps, because the less visibility an illegal site has, the less it will be accessed.”

More Targets?

By now, it’s clear that the music industry groups have discovered their new power. However, as far as we can see their actions have been limited to The Pirate Bay. That’s noteworthy, as the music industry groups also obtained ISP blocking orders against many other sites .

The popular torrent sites 1337x, LimeTorrents and TorrentDownloads remain accessible through Google, despite a BPI blocking order. The same is true for the music download portal NewAlbumReleases and cyberlocker Nitroflare.

Even the blocking order for popular YouTube download tools such as Flvto.biz, 2Conv.com, 2Convert.net, and mp3.studio has yet to reach Google. This, despite the fact that these sites are seen as the largest piracy threat to the industry.

It’s not clear why these other sites haven’t been reported but perhaps they will be targeted at a later stage. TorrentFreak asked BPI if that’s the case but, at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Two decades ago, when the file-sharing boom was just getting started, many people saw piracy as a mystical treasure hunt.

At the time, record shops and video stores still dominated the street scene. That would soon be over, as offline entertainment swiftly moved online.

Instead of listening to a CD at a local store, people started to sample music from the convenience of their own homes. It could take a few hours for a download to complete, but for many, this anticipation was part of the excitement.

Supply and Demand

Despite the potential legal repercussions, it was instantly clear that millions of people were eager to consume pirated content. However, in order for the system to work, a steady supply of uploaders was also required.

Warez groups were already sharing pirated content in their own secretive ecosystems long before Napster and BitTorrent were invented but, when torrent sites took off, a new breed of uploaders began to emerge. These people curated pirated files and shared them publicly for the whole world to enjoy.

The Pirate Bay has always been a breeding ground for uploaders. Some have professional setups with automated bots, but many take a much more casual approach. Not much is known about these hobbyists but we were able to find one willing to share his views.

Vtwin88cube

The uploader in question is “vtwin88cube,” who shared his first torrent on The Pirate Bay in 2010, well over a decade ago. Like most uploaders he has his own niche, in his case specializing in high-quality music releases. As a former radio DJ, this isn’t a coincidence.

Vtwin88cube first heard about The Pirate Bay in the mid-2000s, still using a dial-up connection at the time. He was blown away by what the site offered and when the bandwidth constraints were sorted, a download spree began.

“Having been introduced to the biggest ‘Candy Store’ in the world was a life-changing experience for me. I started downloading MP3 music from the Bay. However, half of the time the tags were messed up or song titles were misspelled.

“I’m a former radio DJ and in radio stations, there’s little room for such inaccuracies. I thought to myself, I can do better, and decided to start uploading properly tagged music. It quickly grew into an addiction.”

3,000+ Uploads

From one moment to the next, Vtwin88cube progressed from basic user to Pirate Bay uploader. Back then everyone could sign up for an account so it wasn’t all that special. But it wasn’t a fluke either.

After more than a decade Vtwin88cube is still uploading FLAC music releases and he now has more than 3,000 uploads on record. These are not all albums he personally ripped. On the contrary, most uploads are recycled hard-to-find torrents he collected over the years.

It’s impossible to find out how many people downloaded the torrents, but it will easily be over a million, if not many more.

Like most uploaders, Vtwin88cube is well aware of the legal risks. Getting caught can lead to life-destroying legal trouble. Meanwhile, being an uploader doesn’t bring in any money, it only costs time and effort. So what does he get out of it?

Vtwin88cube says that he sees it as a way to help other people access music they may be unable to enjoy otherwise.

“I get a sense of satisfaction that maybe in some small way I’ve made someone’s life a little more enjoyable. TPB was and still is to some degree vital for people getting music. Times are tough, just because someone can’t afford to buy music, are they any less deserving? I don’t think so.”

The Green Skull

There are probably other motivations involved as well. After uploading for 12 years, Vtwin88cube is now considered a VIP uploader at The Pirate Bay. This is a ‘trusted’ status that comes with a green skull, which is shown on all uploads.

“I’m very proud of my VIP uploader status on TPB and other sites also,” Vtwin88cube says, noting that he also shares torrents on 1337x, Demonoid, Prostylex, and TorrentGalaxy.

Another major feather in the cap of Vtwin88cube is the fact that one of his releases was apparently downloaded at The Élysée Palace a few years ago. The Élysée is the official residence of the President of the French Republic.

“I’m also proud that former French President Sarkozy liked my FLAC rip of the Beach Boys- Greatest Hits – only the best quality will do for the Palace!” Vtwin88cube tells us.

The prolific music uploader has also spotted his work in other unusual places. In the renowned music database Musicbrainz, for example, his “ The Very Best of Guns N’ Roses ” compilation is listed as an official album release, complete with homemade album art.

A Family

These credits and the ability to ‘help’ others can be motivations to continue uploading, despite the risks. And perhaps there’s a third factor as well; a sense of belonging and the friendships that were formed along the way.

“I’ve developed numerous friendships with other VIP uploaders and crew members over the years, we’re a family.”

Vtwin88cube says that there’s a dedicated group of uploaders who stay in regular contact but not all people stick around. Some uploaders disappear without a trace and, sadly enough, there’s an obituary list as well.

“Occasionally, real-world family members will reach out on the forums or by PM letting us know that someone has passed away and won’t be uploading anymore. Usually the wife or children. Very sad indeed.”

As a seasoned uploader, Vtwin88cube has learned to take precautions in order to remain relatively anonymous. He uses a VPN to log in to the site and while seeding his torrents.

But copyright holders are not the only threat. Vtwin88cube also had his Pirate Bay account taken over by hackers who used it to upload German movies, likely scam-related. Eventually, he managed to get the account back with help from other TPB VIP uploaders, but it was a wake-up call for sure.

The Old Vessel That Keeps Sailing

In recent years The Pirate Bay has decayed somewhat. It is impossible to register new accounts and the comments have been closed. But many uploaders have remained loyal, including Vtwin88cube.

“TPB has definitely changed a lot over the years, she’s an old vessel with maintenance issues. The bilge pumps are running 24/7 keeping her afloat thanks to the tireless work of TPB crew.”

As the site has grown older, its uploaders have too. Vtwin88cube is no exception. His release output isn’t what it used to be but he says that stopping is not an option.

“My production output isn’t what it used to be for various reasons though. I’ve been on the verge of burnout for several years, but I hope to make it another decade!

“It’s my online family and the competition that keeps me going. I guess I’m trying to set a longevity record. The only thing that can make me stop is for the internet police to pry my keyboard from my cold dead hand!”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.