There’s a message on the IRC channel stating:
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)
Brokep, a Piratebay admin told slyck:
“We are not sure when it will return, but we are moving it to another country if necessary,”
The Piratebay suffered some downtime before, but nothing as serious as this.
Note that no crime has been proven yet, it’s still under investigation. This will probably the ultimate test to determine whether hosting a torrent tracker is illegal (in Sweden), or not.
The current estimate is that 20% of all torrents are tracked by the piratebay. This means that a lot of torrents will stop downloading. If you are experiencing problems downloading a torrent, make sure to turn on DHT if your BitTorrent client supports it.
Update: The MPAA is happy:
“The bottom line is that the operators of the Pirate Bay and others like them are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works and files protected under the law,” said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. “We applaud Swedish law enforcement for their effort to stop egregious copyright infringement on The Pirate Bay.”
Update: Check out these Stockholm Traffic Graphs
Update: 3 Piratebay Admins are held in custody, so the rumor goes.
Update: Mininova’s traffic is skyrocketing due to the Piratebay raid, they try to place an extra server as soon as possible.
Update: The Swedish Pirate party responds: (press release)
“This is exactly the kind of raids that the Pirate Party wants to stop”, Rickard finishes. “When society sends the police on it’s youths because they listen to music and watches film, then it is not the youth who are misbehaving. Then it is society that needs to get a grip.”
Update: The Piratebay.org site is updated, stating:
SITE DOWN – WILL BE UP AND FULLY FUNCTIONAL WITHIN A DAY OR TWO
Update: PirateBay HOAX? A Déjà Vu
Update: The 3 Piratebay Admins that were held in custody are released. They are being charged with copyright infringement.
Update: The Empty Datacentre
Update: Felis silvestris says (comments): Swedish TV news are reporting that the raid was ordered by the political secretary of the Minister of Justice, following consultations between US and Swedish government reps, in Washington, DC. When will they ever learn that US law applies only on US terr(or)itory?
Update: GameSwitch, A Swedish / UK company was also affected (among 100+ other sites) by the raid. All sites are financially damaged (more or less) by the downtime. From their press release:
“Our hardware was severed from the internet at approximately 12 noon Swedish time today without notice or explanation and currently is believed to be in the possession of Stockholm Police, although this cannot be confirmed; we have thus far been unsuccessful in attempts to seek information from both the Police as they hold their silence and our contacts at our service provider, PRQ (most of whom had been taken in for questioning). However, from the little information that we have managed to gather, it appears that 50 police officers were involved in the operation which resulted in an entire building being removed of its hardware by officers, not discriminating in any way between those of ThePirateBay and unrelated customers of PRQ.”
Update: The website of the piano society is also closed due to the piratebay raids
Update: Hackers attacked the Swedish Police
Update: Pirate Demonstration In Stockholm on Sathurday
Update: an insiders perspective
Update: They’re BACK
Update: Video material of the raid
Update: .torrent of the raid
Update: The search function on TPB works now
Update: Piratebay in trouble: Too many new users..
“The database problem is actually that we have so many new users and the current hardware setup isn’t tuned perfectly,”
Update: They returned to their base in Sweden
Stay tuned for updates…
