Pirates independence day

The raid on the Pirate Bay took down the site, but not for long. Within three days the site was back online, and much to the dislike of anti-piracy outfits, its traffic had doubled thanks to all the media attention.

At the time, the Swedish police confiscated 180 servers, most of which had nothing to do with The Pirate Bay. Last December the investigation finally came to an end, resulting in 4,000 pages of legal paperwork. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall later announced that four individuals involved with The Pirate Bay are being charged with “assisting copyright infringement” of 4 software applications, 9 films and 22 music tracks.

After the raid, it became clear that the US had threatened to put Sweden on WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay problem. Even the MPAA was involved, as John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA wrote a letter to Sweden’s State Secretary in which he stated, “It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.”

The users of the site don’t have to worry that the site will be taken offline though, no matter what the court decides. “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more,” Sunde said earlier.

In a blog post, The Pirate Bay team now suggests to make May 31st a day of celebration for pirates: “Let today be the pirates independence day! Today we celebrate the victories we’ve had and the victories that will come. Today we celebrate that we’re united in our efforts. Keep on seeding!”

Happy Pirates independence day!

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