The Pirate Bay
Tags: piratebay, pirate, thepiratebay
Published: 2020-06-02 15:19:13

Most of us have probably wondered about how the torrenting site called The Pirate Bay originated or came into existence. The Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing site originated in Sweden in 2003 by the think tank group called Piratbyran. In the early days of the pirate bay site, they provided access to entertainment media, digital content, and software applications. Originally, the company that gave birth to the Pirate Bay was against copyrighting. The purpose of the Pirate Bay network was not to gain any profit but to make the statement against the copyright regulations that they did not approve of.

In there early days, the Pirate Bay network was known for only music and movie sharing. But it was more than just the music or movie sharing site. Users can download anything ranging from recent movies or TV programs to any version of software application. They have a wide range of selections to choose from. The Pirate Bay network offered almost about anything possible to offer online in their prime days. The resources available in Pirate Bay contained the popular operating system installation files and even the cracks or keys to access the premium versions of the software. This made the Pirate Bay network very convenient and popular among the internet users across the globe. 

The Pirate Bay network worked based on the BitTorrent principle. It emphasized decentralized sharing of files in which the files are distributed among the torrent user;s themselves. The network only keeps track of the location of each file. The original file is segmented into several chucks and distributed among the users of the Pirate Bay Network. The approach was later known as Bittorrenting. Using this mechanism was very advantageous for the company as well as the downloaders. It was easy for the pirate bay to maintain the servers whereas the users were getting the optimum download speed.

## Downloading and Uploading in the Pirate Bay Network

Most of the users of the Pirate Bay and the torrent files use some kind of client software for example: uTorrent. These torrent clients have the ability to accumulate the available trackers of the torrent file and allow the seamless download. They also have features to add extra trackers if required to maximize the download rate. When it comes to torrent files, we cannot help but notice two terms which are seeders and leechers. Having knowledge about the seeders and leechers would help a lot in the downloads. The leechers are the once who download the torrent file and deny acting as one of the file sharer. However, seeders are the once who download the torrent file and share a chuck of distributed file in the Pirate Bay network. So while downloading any torrent file, it is necessary to take note of the seeders number. The higher the number, the higher the rate of download.

Downloading does not require any sort of registration. It is free and very simple. However, one needs to sign-up and sign-in to the Pirate Bay network to upload the file and make it available in the Pirate Bay network. The uploading requires the uploader to become a member of the Pirate Bay network. Though registration is required, uploading is as simple as downloading.

## Lawsuits and Legal Issues.
The Pirate Bay Network grew its popularity as a free peer-to-peer file-sharing site. But, the conspiracies and lawsuits faced by this site was not less prevalent. Many legal complaints have been fought over illegal torrenting of files over copyright issues. Since the stuffs were available free to download in the torrent site, many companies in the entertainment business, software business lost their revenue in sales. In this uphill battle against the copyright lawsuits, the first of many was the raids to their server houses. The raid to their Stockholm server house caused the massive shutdown of their site which miraculously lasted only three days. This was followed by numerous investigations and raids. Many lawsuits were filed against the site. The companies like Hollywood and Google took on pirate bay network filing numerous lawsuits. Many artists raised their voices against illegal downloading because it was degrading their income as people preferred to download their art, singles and full albums for free instead of purchasing them. The creators of this site were convicted of copyright infringement and were sentenced to a year of prison as well as fined over 3.6 million.

There were originally 4 members in the Piratbyran. The group dissolved eventually after the fourth member died. The Pirate Bay site was banned in many countries by the government like Argentina and Australia. In many countries, the site was made inaccessible by the Internet Service Providers. The Pirate Bay team made a bold move by switching to cloud servers. This made the site more efficient and accessible with protection against bans. They even used Virtual Machines hosted by different providers to cut down on hardware and prevent their operations. The Pirate Bay network stayed up and running for a long time despite facing numerous downtimes. They were clever enough to fight the lawsuits and protect their operation by applying various solutions to their operating mechanism. With opposition being the entertainment business companies, tech companies, software companies, and artists, the Pirate Bay company found their support in millions of users that they serve the free resource to.

Even though the original Pirate Bay site is down, numerous other file sharing sites emerged following the footsteps of the Pirate Bay network. These sites are called mirrors to the original site. In case you want to visit the original site, you can navigate to it by tapping on <https://thepiratesbay.com/>. 

The legacy of the most popular file-sharing site that had millions of traffic and download resources has been kept alive by these mirror sites. The mirrors sites did not disappoint in comparison to the original one. 
They used the same BitTorrent principle along with a magnet link mechanism to provide the file sharing platform. You can access one of the mirror sites of [The Pirate Bay](https://www.pirate-bay.net/) here.