Ten years ago this week, four men were found guilty and sentenced to prison for running The Pirate Bay. At the time, Peter Sunde said that the site would continue, no matter what. A decade on he has been proven absolutely right and that in itself is utterly remarkable.

On the morning of March 3, 2009, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, were all waiting for the final day in the now-infamous trial featuring The Pirate Bay.

The night before the original ‘notorious site’ had gone offline, worrying the masses. But as it had done countless times before, the site reappeared once again after Fredrik (TiAMO) worked his magic – from inside the halls of justice.

“I fixed the Pirate Bay from inside the courtroom just minutes ago. The site is back online,” he said. 

This type of defiance, before and after the quartet were eventually sentenced to jail and huge fines a decade ago this week,became a hallmark of the three key defendants. While early financier Lundström quickly fell by the wayside, the trio of Sunde, Neij and Svartholm only appeared to gather energy from the momentous event.

All three expressed surprise at receiving jail sentences but all pledged never to pay a penny to the authorities.

“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay if we could,” Sunde said. “If I would have money I would rather burn everything I owned.”

While millions expected The Pirate Bay itself to immediately disappear, Sunde vowed that would never happen. Quite remarkably and against all the odds, his words carry weight today. Anyone can visit ThePirateBay.org and see the same homepage they’ve always seen, as if the trial of the site’s operators never happened.

For them, however, life would prove less than straightforward in the years to come.

On November 26, 2010, following an inevitable appeal, the court decreased the prison sentences for three of the defendants (Sunde, Neij and Lundström) but increased the damages to be paid to the entertainment industry plaintiffs. Svartholm, who was absent from the appeal hearing on medical grounds, would be dealt with later.

In the end, all four men served their sentences but Sunde, Neij and Svartholm did so defiantly. No one expected anything less from the Nordic upstarts, who took on the might of Hollywood and the music industries expecting to win, only to lose in the end.

Or did they?

While no one can claim time in prison as a victory, Sunde, Neij and Svartholm (or brokep, TiAMO, and Anakata, to use their aliases) remained steadfast in their opposition. None went quietly, none caved into enormous pressure, none went back on their word.

These are qualities despised by copyright holders when viewed through the prism of the ‘theft’ of their intellectual property. But for millions of followers in the pirate world, there was a chance to vicariously sail the high seas through the experiences of their heroes, at least for a few years.

All three men have now slipped into the background of Pirate Bay history but it is nothing short of remarkable that the site still exists today. Despite endless enforcement efforts, not to mention widespread blocking around the world, it’s still one of the most visited torrent sites on the planet.

Admittedly, the graphics, search feature, and just about everything else are still stuck in the past. But unlike flashier alternatives such as KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent, the platform still exists today while serving millions of users with the latest content.

The Pirate Bay has also become the digital embodiment of the fabled hydra. Today the main domain still exists, but so do dozens of other tentacles that replicate the site if not entirely, closely enough. While the body may one day be found and slain, there are no signs that day is near. 

The Galaxy’s Most Resilient BitTorrent Site? It’s hard to argue otherwise.

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