SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
The Pirate Bay Turns 15 Years Old
Founded in 2003 by a group of hackers and activists, The Pirate Bay aimed to bring file-sharing to the masses. In the fifteen years that followed, the site transformed from a small community to Hollywood's resilient arch-rival, serving millions of users. And that's not the only thing that changed. Todayish, The Pirate Bay turns 15 years old, which is quite an achievement considering the immense legal pressure it has faced over the years.
While the exact launch date is a bit of a mystery, even to the site's founders, August 10 was previously chosen as its anniversary. What we do know is that the site was brought online in 2003 by now-disbanded pro-culture organization Piratbyrån, which is Swedish for Bureau of Piracy. The group was formed by political activists and hackers in the same year, many of whom had already launched other web projects challenging political, moral, and power structures.
One of the group's unwritten goals was to offer a counterweight to the propaganda being spread by local anti-piracy outfit Antpiratbyrån. With BitTorrent as the up-and-coming file-sharing technology, they saw fit to start their own file-sharing site to promote sharing of information.
The Pirate Bay first came online in Mexico where Gottfrid Svartholm, aka Anakata, hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time. After a few months, the site moved to Sweden where it was hosted on a Pentium III 1GHz laptop with 256MB RAM. This one machine, which belonged to Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, kept the site online and included a fully operational tracker.
Related: Anti-Piracy Firm: P2P Piracy Still Relevant
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday August 13 2018, @06:23PM (8 children)
Share your torrent trackers on IRC like god intended.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @06:32PM (7 children)
Unless you use some overlay network, I guess.
Tor folks discourage file sharing and bittorrent in general, and the other such networks are too small to make it useful.
It's better just to buy your content in a way that everyone involved agrees to the transaction—if you think it's too expensive, then don't consume that content!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday August 13 2018, @06:48PM (5 children)
It is too expensive, and I don't mean just $. Copyright restrictions hold back society and progress.
I consider it a civic duty to rebel against unfair laws and restrictions. I wish people would boycott the whole industry, stop watching movies, listening to music, and reading books altogether, until the industry agrees to substantial reform or abolishment of copyright laws. I
(Score: 3, Informative) by tftp on Monday August 13 2018, @07:05PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:25AM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @08:09PM (2 children)
You're just consumers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @08:33PM
You're just an incel! You and your ilk can't get laid!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @11:52PM
Quite a few people liked my fanfics, thank you very much.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Monday August 13 2018, @09:48PM
You're assuming I can find someone to take my money, which is not always true.
In fact, almost everytime download a torrent it is because of the "not available in your region" thing.
The copyright cartel has no clue about their business.