In 2006, the biggest torrent site in the world -- as well as the most infamous -- was taken down in a raid. The Pirate Bay was offline. The people behind the initial take down were rumored to be very close to the MPAA and RIAA. Pirates, enraged that their favorite torrent site was down, threatened mass DDOS reprisal.
A few other co-location customers had other servers taken away, which was a casualty of the raid. Eventually, it all calmed down, the site came up (it was down for less than a few days), and life carried on as normal.
Well, eight years later, the same thing just happened. The Swedish police raided the co-location facility and removed several servers from a mountain- based co-lo, widely rumored to be Nacka. There is also an unconfirmed rumor that one person has been arrested. No more details are available at this time.
The only statement made was by prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, who said, "There were a number of police officers and digital forensics experts there. This took place during the morning and continued until this afternoon. Several servers and computers were seized, but I cannot say exactly how many."
At press time, the sites are still down. What is interesting, but not as widely reported, is the fact that a number of other torrent sites appear down as well, including the popular TV torrent site EZTV. It is not known if this was due to a similar take down by government-related agencies or a knee jerk reaction on the part of the site operators.
Interestingly, Peter Sunde, one of the original founders of the Pirate Bay, expressed the opinion that the site should stay down. Sunde reasoned that the Pirate Bay long ago lost its compass and community feel.
It is unclear what the future holds for Pirate Bay; we do not yet know if the site that the content companies hate will ever reappear.
Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
