Pirate's Bay

How the Pirate’s Bay Manages to Stay in Business

A BitTorrent is defined as a peer to peer file sharing protocol, and is used to distribute large amounts of data without actually having to store information online permanently. The initial distributor of a BitTorrent is called the first ‘seed’ on BitTorrent trackers. Every peer who begins downloading the initial seed’s BitTorrent then uploads the data that they have downloaded to other peers. This is done so as to reduce the stress on the initial distributor’s hardware and bandwith, and sidesteps the dependence usually put upon the original distributor. Say, if you were simply sending something to twelve people at once, a BitTorrent protocol will allow the first six people you were sending it to to send what they have of the file so far to the next six people. This allows users to share the hardware stress of transferring files, and it makes it so that, if the initial distributor should be disconnected, there are still several others online distributing the same file.

A BitTorrent tracker, then, is any server which allows easy communication between peers who are using the BitTorrent protocol to transfer data.

One of the largest and most well known BitTorrent trackers would probably be The Pirate’s Bay. The website actually bills itself as the “world’s largest BitTorrent tracker”, but in reality, is ranked at 91 in the Alexa list, and only 258 by Quantcast. Still, according to the LA Times, The Pirate Bay is, nonetheless, one of the largest facilitators of illegal downloading.

The site was established in late 2003 by the Swedish group known as The Piracy Bureau. This group is actually motivated not by greed, but by the political aim of eliminating copyright law.

Politically motivated or not, the service is technically illegal.

Other file sharing services like Rapidshare and Limewire can more or less get away with facilitating illegal file trading because that’s not really their purpose. Limewire and Rapidshare are actually more or less intended for legitimate trading of open or free content. That most of the users probably employ the services for the sake of swiping copyright protected albums and movies off of the internet without having to pay a dime is more of a by-product.

The Pirate’s Bay, on the other hand, openly endorses software and media piracy. They have actually made themselves a direct target for the Swedish police by being so open in their purpose.

In 2006, the site’s servers, which were located in Stockholm, were raided by the Swedish police. This caused the website to go offline. The MPAA immediately reported the raid to be a success.

Three days later, the website went back online.

With ore than twice as much visitor traffic as it had when it went offline.

Ironically, the raid was the best thing that could’ve happened to the owners of the Pirate’s Bay. With their name in the headlines of Swedish papers and people voicing support for the site and their political goals, they were spreading the word on their beliefs, and using the incident to win some free publicity.

Today, the Pirate’s Bay is still up and running, with plans on expanding. They continue to flaunt an unwillingness to submit to cease and desist orders, and continue to support and encourage the copyright infringing activities of many of their users.

So how do they get away with it?

Technically, simply allowing people to infringe on copyright isn’t illegal. If it were, every email and instant message service on the internet would be banned, because they all allow people to swap copyright infringing software and media.

Furthermore, the owners of The Pirate’s Bay are pretty well versed in protecting their butts. For example, a group known as MediaDefender had allegedly been employed by such companies as Universal Music Group, Sony Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox to help in the efforts against The Pirate’s Bay. Emails between members of MediaDefender were leaked, revealing plans to hire hackers to illegally attack the servers owned by The Pirate’s Bay.

The Pirate’s Bay pressed charges against all of MediaDefender’s alleged clients.

MediaDefender’s stocks fell sharply, with most of their clients jumping ship.

It had been further shown that the MPAA had hired MediaDefender to pollute the Pirate Bay’s database with viral programs.

The Pirate’s Bay has been successfully blocked in some areas, but if the above can serve as a lesson: You won’t defeat piracy by fighting dirty.

If we are to end software and media piracy, it cannot be by resorting to illegal measures, or else the media companies are replacing a relatively minor evil for a much more harmful and deceitful evil.