The Pirate Bay Is 10 Years Old: 'We Really Didn't Think We'd Make It This Far'

An anonymous reader writes "The Pirate Bay, arguably the most resilient file sharing website, was first founded on August 9, 2003, although it didn't launch until September 15, 2003. Nevertheless, the group considers the former date to be its start, so today The Pirate Bay is 10 years old. From their blog: 'We really didn't think we'd make it this far. Not because of cops, mafiaa or corrupt politicians. But because we thought that we'd eventually be to old for this shit. But hey, running this ship makes us feel young.'"

Comments

Re:Yeah, it's those politicians who are corrupt

[jamstar7]

Your argument would be fine and logical IF the copyright holders actually paid the content producers what it's worth to keep them producing. The middlemen, the production companies and distributors, tend to grab the copyrights, and try to pass off 'work for hire' contracts on the actual content creators to pay them a set fee to create, thus keeping all the profits for themselves.

Read what Joe Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, has to say about 'Hollywood accounting'. It's easily Googleable, but one of the things he's been quoted on is that B5 has *yet* to 'show a profit' according to Warner Brothers, and the way the contract was written, they could have a fire on a set in the Congo next week and the replacement costs would be charged to B5's profits. So don't give me that 'the artist gets ripped off by piracy' routine. The artists are already getting ripped off by their distributors.