The Pirate Bay
Website providing torrent files and magnet links / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software.[1] Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
Type of site | Torrent index, magnet links provider |
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Available in | 35 languages available, primarily English and Swedish |
Created by | |
Revenue | Advertisements, donations, merchandise, cryptocurrency mining |
URL | thepiratebay |
Registration | Optional, free |
Launched | 15 September 2003; 20 years ago (2003-09-15) |
Current status | Online |
Written in | HTML, JavaScript, and PHP |
The Pirate Bay has sparked controversies and discussion about legal aspects of file sharing, copyright, and civil liberties and has become a platform for political initiatives against established intellectual property laws as well as a central figure in an anti-copyright movement.[2] The website has faced several shutdowns and domain seizures, switching to a series of new web addresses to continue operating.[3]
In April 2009, the website's founders–Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm–were found guilty in the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden for assisting in copyright infringement and were sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine.[4] In some countries, Internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block access to the website. Subsequently, proxy websites have been providing access to it.[5][6][7][8][9] The founders were all released by 2015 after serving shortened sentences.[3]