Monday, August 24, 2009

Pirate bay offline

Today marks victory for Swedish authorities and Hollywood and a sad day for file sharing. Today the Swedish Authorities have ordered The Pirate Bay to be taken offline immediately or the ISP could face heavy fines of 500,000 Kroner ($70,600 US) a day. The Pirate Bay's ISP had no choice but to comply and disconnect the website from the Internet.

The take down of The Pirate Bay comes 3 days earlier than expected, as the site was going offline on August 27 or legalize the site before then, which was unlikely to happen. Black Internet, The Pirate Bay's largest bandwidth supplier is not the only connection to the Internet the website has, technically the website could go back online until other ISP's are sent cease and desist orders.

"This is absolutely ridiculous. The Court seems to consider themselves above the Constitution", said the leader of The Pirate Party, Rich Falkvinge.

As one of the world's largest torrent trackers goes offline, dozens more will surface in its place. The Pirate Bay had over 25 million unique peers and 3.6 million registered users downloading from its website.

The future of The Pirate Bay is uncertain as the owners will face one year in prison and a fine of $2.4 million US.

Update: A Pirate Bay insider has told sources they have "got a new connection to the net" for their website. The owners of the website were prepared for take down actions such as today's and have secured another Internet connection for the website, with minimal down time. The Pirate Bay should return by tomorrow morning for almost all users.

The Pirate Bay team added this, "The MAFIAA has spent millions of dollars and endless amounts of time to get this ban in order. Our guess is that they also bribed a bit to get it since it violates so many laws not only in Sweden but also in the EU, not to mention violations against human rights. And what do they have to show for it? 3 hours of partial downtime."

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