The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is a website that provides torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in Sweden in 2003.

In 2009, the website’s founders were put on trial in Sweden, charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted material. They were found guilty by the court and sentenced to a year in prison with a fine of 30 million SEK (€2.7M or US$3.5M as of 2009). In some countries, ISPs have been ordered to block access to the website. Since then, proxies have been made all around the world providing access to The Pirate Bay.

"thepiratebay.se" was originally known as "thepiratebay.org".

Republic Polytechnic has blocked access to the website, whereas access is being blocked in Netherlands and Ireland, some websites cannot render properly.