This week The Pirate Bay quietly celebrated its 13th anniversary. Where other giants have fallen in the past, the notorious Pirate ship has stayed afloat. Today we chat with the TPB-team to discuss their remarkable achievement.
Hollywood hoped that it would never happen, but this week The Pirate Bay quietly turned thirteen years old.
The site was founded in 2003 by Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån (Piracy Bureau). The idea was to create the first public file-sharing network in Sweden, but the site soon turned into the global file-sharing icon it is today.
Over the years there have been numerous attempts to shut the site down. Following pressure from the United States, Swedish authorities raided the site in 2006, only to see it come back stronger.
The criminal convictions of the site’s founders didn’t kill the site either, nor did any of the subsequent attempts to take it offline.
The Pirate Bay is still very much ‘alive’ today.
That’s quite an achievement by itself, looking at all the other sites that have fallen over the years. Just last month KickassTorrents shut down, followed by Torrentz a few days ago.
Many KickassTorrents and Torrentz users are now turning to TPB to get their daily dose of torrents. As a result, The Pirate Bay is now the most visited torrent site, once again.
TorrentFreak spoke to several members of the TPB-crew. While they are not happy with the circumstances, they do say that the site has an important role to fulfil in the torrent community.
“TPB is as important today as it was yesterday, and its role in being the galaxy’s most resilient torrent site will continue for the foreseeable future,” Spud17 says.
“Sure, TPB has its flaws and glitches but it’s still the go-to site for all our media needs, and I can see TPB still being around in 20 or 30 years time, even if the technology changes,” she adds.
Veteran TPB-crew member Xe agrees that TPB isn’t perfect but points to the site’s resilience as a crucial factor that’s particularly important today.
“TPB ain’t perfect. There are plenty of things wrong with it, but it is simple, steadfast and true,” Xe tells TorrentFreak.
“So it’s no real surprise that it is once more the destination of choice or that it has survived for so long in spite of the inevitable turnover of crew.”
And resilient it is. Thirteen years after the site came online, The Pirate Bay is the “King of Torrents” once again.
Finally, we close with a yearly overview of the top five torrent sites of the last decade. Notably, the Pirate Bay is the only site that appears in the list every year, which is perhaps the best illustration of the impact it had, and still has today.
2007
1. TorrentSpy
2. Mininova
3. The Pirate Bay
4. isoHunt
5. Demonoid
2008
1. Mininova
2. isoHunt
3. The Pirate Bay
4. Torrentz
5. BTJunkie
2009
1. The Pirate Bay
2. Mininova
3. isoHunt
4. Torrentz
5. Torrentreactor
2010
1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz
3. isoHunt
4. Mininova
5. BTJunkie
2011
1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz
3. isoHunt
4. KickassTorrents
5. BTJunkie
2012
1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz.com
3. KickassTorrents
4. isoHunt
5. BTJunkie
2013
1. The Pirate Bay
2. KickassTorrents
3. Torrentz
4. ExtraTorrent
5. 1337X
2014
1. The Pirate Bay
2. KickassTorrents
3. Torrentz
4. ExtraTorrent
5. YIFY-Torrents
2015
1. KickassTorrents
2. Torrentz.com
3. ExtraTorrent
4. The Pirate Bay
5. YTS
2016
1. KickassTorrents
2. The Pirate Bay
3. ExtraTorrent
4. Torrentz
4. RARBG
Today
1. The Pirate Bay
2. ExtraTorrent
3. RARBG
4. YTS.AG
5. 1337X