Pirates Bay saved by Swedish Pirate Party

Over the years many Bittorent sites have been shut – caused by pressure from the entertainment industry to any authorities who would listen. Pirates Bay is probably the most resilient of them all and it seems that whenever they get shut down, they just pop up again a short time later with a different host.

Cyber Bunker who have their servers in a former nuclear bunker in the Netherlands cut them off after a German court injunction. Plantiffs included Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal City Studios. Cyber Bunker are not letting the matter rest and are filing a counter claim but this will take some time. This left Pirates Bay in limbo for a few days … well that was until The Swedish Pirate Party offered them bandwidth in a rather daring move.

The Pirate Party leader Rick Falk Vinge spoke to the Inquirer and said “providing bandwidth to a search engine and homepage is completely legal”. He then went on to say that on Tuesday morning the two organisations agreed that the party would provide the bandwidth.

The original founders of Pirates Bay haven't had an easy life, they were sentenced to a year in jail and fined, however, once again, that ruling is also under appeal.

In a defiant move, Pirates Bay are hosting an image on their front page basically taunting the authorities – a cat with a rather comical slogan under it.

If you suck at net speak, the rough translation is “I am in your Skynet (terminator reference to intelligent self aware computer systems), laughing at your futile efforts to control our internet”. Its a ‘virtual finger' at the authorities.

KitGuru says: Has the cat got the cream? We wonder for how long …

Are Pirates Bay within their rights to offer a search engine to content deemed as illegal? Or do you feel that they should be shut down for good? Discuss in our forums or just leave a quick comment below.

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