May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time – The Pirate Bay’s servers.
While the policemen were carrying out their jobs, Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik learned that something was seriously wrong. In the months before the raid they were already being watched by private investigators day and night, but this time something was about to happen to their trackers.
Fredrik recalls the day vividly: “I got a phone call like 10am in the morning, it was Anakata [Gottfrid].” He told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the co-location facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.
As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker, so he initiated a full backup of the site. At the co-location facility there were 65 policemen, some in civilian clothing. Fredrik asked them: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” To which they responded, “Who are YOU? What are you doing here?” After questions back and forth, Fredrik eventually told them his name, and a police officer said, “Oh, we’ve been looking for you.”
Although these events may seem almost comedic, Fredrik’s decision to start a backup of the site is probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team were able to resurrect the site within three days. If there hadn’t have been a recent backup, things may have turned out quite differently.
Technicalities aside, the determination to get the site online as soon as possible set the tone for the years that followed. Backups were spread over different countries to guarantee that the site would survive any attack. Although the site has gone down for 24 hours or more after the raid, this was usually caused by technical problems combined with laziness or wild parties. If they were shut down because of legal troubles, it usually took just a few hours to set up shop elsewhere.
Now back to 2006 where the Swedish police confiscated 180 servers, most of which had nothing to do with The Pirate Bay. After all equipment was taken Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid were escorted to the police station. During the subsequent questioning, the Pirate Bay trio gave up very little information. Gottfrid quickly confessed to his crime – of killing the Swedish prime minister when he was 2 years old, but that was all they got.
After the raid it became clear that the US had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay problem. Even the MPAA was involved, with John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA writing 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 raid eventually resulted in a lengthy investigation where the police presented 4000 pages of evidence against the people involved. This was used by the prosecution during the Pirate Bay trial of last year, and we all know how that ended. The case is currently waiting to be appealed. The site, meanwhile, is still up and running and it is larger than ever before. Right before the raid the site welcomed its one millionth registered user, today they have well over 4 million.
The Pirate Bay folks themselves continued to play Hollywood with their mockings and have declared May 31st to be the independence day of pirates. “Let today be the pirates independence day!,” they announced in 2008. “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!”
