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Thepiratebay.org was raided by Swedish police this morning, and all bittorrent related servers was seized.
The site went offline at about 12:45 Paris time (CET), and shortly thereafter, Thepiratebay.org crew issued this statement in their IRC channel;
"The site is currently down - Yes it's the police - No, we're not gonna close the site (and we have no logs of transfers)"
Thepiratebay.org was/is by far the worlds biggest bittorrent tracker and served millions of people every day.
How long their going to be offline is uncertain, as Bittorrent sites are perfectly legal in Sweden, as long as they do not provide direct access to copyrighted material. Some speculate as soon as the servers have been checked out, it's business as usual.
Pirate Bay said that it would be up and running again within a week.
The search warrant issued by the police only allows them to secure evidence of any allegations of copyright breaches. Pirate Bay said it had been assured that the take-down notice was 'normal' and it could get compensation for the time that the servers are down.
It almost seems that Pirate Bay is itching to get itself to court and test its legal rights under Swedish Law. The outfit has been one of the more public of pirate operations. It has worked on the reasoning that the site's function was to direct users towards the files that they search for and manage the uploads and downloads. The website itself did not hold any copyright files.
A spokespirate told P2PNet that three of its staff have been charged with copyright infringement.
He accused AntiPiratByrån of misleading the police by claimign that PirateBay was offering Warez on the servers.
There is a backup plan which involves moving the servers to another country, such as Russia or Holland, the SpokesPirate said.
Quote:
As one of the largest trackers, ThePirateBay.org largely replaced the search engine SuprNova.org. SuprNova.org met its demise in late 2004, when it was under pressure from the entertainment industry to shut it operation down. Conversely, such pressure has been ineffective against ThePiratebay.org.
When such political pressure fails, the use of force is typically the next course of action. In a move that many thought would never come, Slyck.com learned this morning that ThePirateBay.org was raided by Swedish police.
“…The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure),” ThePirateBay.org spokesperson “brokep” told Slyck.com.
The seizure of ThePirateBay.org’s entire server farm will guarantee this BitTorrent tracker will remain offline until the police complete their investigation. The uncertainty on the part of the police may stem from the fact ThePirateBay.org's servers only host .torrent files, not actual copyrighted material. As a tracker, ThePirateBay.org's function is to index .torrent files and to direct BitTorrent traffic and maintain the swarm (uploads and downloads.) The downloaded .torrent file contains all the necessary information to locate and download the queried file. The legality of indirectly linking to copyrighted material has yet to be tested by Swedish courts.
Whether this will keep ThePirateBay.org offline indefinitely is another matter.
“We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary,” brokep said.
According to The Pirate Party, a Swedish copyright reform organization, the raid also seized Piratbyrån's (the Pirate Bureau) servers. Piratbyrån is a educational and quasi-political organization which performs a public servic role similar to The Pirate Party. In addition, The Pirate Party reports "...the servers where located in a protected area, to which the police had no legal right to enter..." Approximately 50 police participated in the raid, which placed into custody two PirateBay.org personnel.
The premature departure of ThePirateBay.org marks a significant turning point in the BitTorrent community. Although it's not currently known what, if any, entertainment entity is behind this raid, failure to secure ThePirateBay.org's permanent removal will only bolster this tracker’s position of defiance.
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