The Pirate Bay has been offline since last month following a police raid in Sweden, but it’s looking increasingly likely that the site will be back in a matter of days.
Fans of the the torrent site were pleased last week to see the return of The Pirate Bay homepage, albeit in a non-functioning form. A countdown clock at the top of the page indicated the popular file-sharing service would return on February 1, and on Monday a slightly redesigned version of the page was put up that now includes a prominent image of a phoenix. The symbol of rebirth has been used by The Pirate Bay for previous relaunches of the service, the Guardian noted in a report this week.
The site’s search box is also present, though as with the links above it for browsing torrents, it’s not active.
The well-known torrent service disappeared from the Web on December 9 after cops raided a server room in Stockholm in connection with suspected copyright infringements. The investigation is ongoing.
The movie and music industry-backed Swedish Rights Alliance claimed at the time that the police acted in response to a recent complaint it made. On its website the organization describes The Pirate Bay as “an illegal commercial service that earns big sums on posting other people’s films and music.”
December’s swoop by cops was the second such raid to knock the service offline, with the last one taking place back in 2006.
Following The Pirate Bay’s disappearance from the Web last month, torrent fans unaffiliated to The Pirate Bay created replacement site OldPirateBay, essentially a clone of the original site complete with links to files. According to TorrentFreak, it’s quickly grown to become one of the most popular torrent sites on the Web.
The site currently has fewer features than The Pirate Bay usually offers, though it’s just announced $100,000 of funds for developers willing to help enhance the site, suggesting it could see improvements in the coming weeks and months. However, with The Pirate Bay set to return next week, it’s unclear if OldPirateBay will be able to retain its user base.
