A BitTorrent file sharing website with links to copyrighted songs, videos, games, applications and pornography, launched in Sweden in 2003. Although the site was offline for short periods due to lawsuits, throughout its history, Pirate Bay generally had the highest illegal file sharing traffic on the Web. From 2010 to 2014, certain founders and hosting providers were convicted of copyright infringement and given prison sentences and hefty fines.
Down But Not Out
Pirate Bay was finally taken down in 2014 when the Swedish police raided the venue and removed the servers, and Google deleted Play Store apps related to the site. Subsequently, other sites have resurrected Pirate Bay's index of files, taking up the cause that all forms of information should be free to the citizens of the world. See
BitTorrent.