The Pirate Bay Still Running on Network of Worldwide Servers
Indicted manager: 'We don't know where the servers are.'
By: Justin Bourne
Posted: 02/04/2008
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - According to one of the four
The Pirate Bay managers indicted Thursday on
charges of facilitating copyright infringement, the BitTorrent tracking site is
not going anywhere any time soon.
In a telephone interview with Threat Level, a section of Wired's blog network, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of
the managers charged Thursday, said The Pirate Bay has set up a clandestine,
double-blind operation with servers spread throughout the world - and out of Swedish
authorities' reach.
"The Pirate Bay is not in Sweden," he said.
Kolmisoppi said the server system is distributed.
"We don't know where the servers are, and we don't want to
know," he said. "We gave them to people we trust, and they don't know it's The
Pirate Bay. They then rent locations and space for them somewhere else. It
could be three countries. It could be six countries."
The Pirate
Bay helps users search for
and access indexed torrents, which contain the information needed to download
data containing copyright-infringing content such as movies, music and software.
Kolmisoppi said The Pirate Bay
operates much like the popular search engine Google, which also points users to
copyrighted works on the Internet.
"We're just a general-purpose search engine and torrent-tracking
system," he said. "You can put whatever you want on The Pirate Bay.
We don't participate in how the people communicate with each other. We only
participate in bringing the possibility to communicate and share files."
The Pirate
Bay has been under the magnifying
glass of the entertainment industry and police for years. In June 2006, a
police raid in Sweden
ignited street protests, and The Pirate Bay received international recognition because
of the coverage by mainstream media.
The Pirate
Bay managers Hans Fredrik
Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstroem and Kolmisoppi also were charged
with facilitating copyright infringement.
A court date has not been set.
Prosecutor Hakan Roswall was not available for comment.
