On December 8th, The Pirate Bay was shut down. The world’s largest torrent website was targeted by Swedish police forces in an electronic raid that forced it to disappear from the internet. The Pirate Bay was created in 2003 with the intent of creating an online library of free digital content. Users upload content which can be downloaded in the form of torrent files. Torrent files do not actually contain the movies or music that users wish to access, they only contain information about the files that are being downloaded. Torrent files also contain metadata about various networks and other downloaders who are sharing content and download speeds with you. Because torrent files do not actually contain the content that users wish to download, they are easy to host cheaply. Many companies have used torrents to host downloads of large games so that they can distribute their content without paying exorbitant fees for web hosting bandwidth. Unfortunately, the nature of this system has attracted and increased online piracy. The decentralized peer-to-peer nature of torrenting makes it difficult to trace and stop the illegal distribution of digital content. Torrent websites like The Pirate Bay are designed to make it easy for users to upload illegal copies of movies, music, and games for distribution all across the internet.

To give an extent of The Pirate Bay’s influence, it is currently ranked as the 88^th most visited website in the world. The Pirate Bay enjoys millions of download every day from users concentrated in the United States, Europe, and Asia. It is the largest torrent website in the world and the largest hub for illegal content. The Swedish Police’s raid in December was successful at shutting down the physical website. However, their aim of reducing torrent activity failed completely. Shortly after The Pirate Bay was taken down, other large torrent websites like IsoHunt, VentureBeat, and TorrentFreak re-hosted the contents of The Pirate Bay through their own websites. Because these competitors were quick to fill in the gap left by the Swedish Police, torrent downloads actually surged by 12 million.

These sorts of incident are fairly thematic for the online torrenting community. Their creative methods of hosting and sharing illegal content allow them to skirt the occasional attacks by law enforcement. For now at least, The Pirate Bay will continue hosting free torrents to the chagrin of police and rightful owners of digital content.