The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is an online index of digital content of mostly entertainment media, founded in 2003, where visitors can search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

In 2009, the website's founders were found guilty in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement. In some countries, Internet service providers have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxies have been providing access to it, and its content is being provided by multiple round-robin servers, collectively nicknamed the "TPB hydra".

History

The Pirate Bay was established in September 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau); it has been run as a separate organization since October 2004. The Pirate Bay was first run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, who are known by their nicknames "anakata" and "TiAMO", respectively. They have both been accused of "assisting in making copyrighted content available" by the Motion Picture Association of America. On 31 May 2006, the website's servers in Stockholm were raided and taken away by Swedish police, leading to three days of downtime.