Nature abhors a vacuum. Aristotle said that. Of course, he was talking about how nature has a tendency to fill empty spaces with stuff. In a way, the internet also abhors a vacuum, and the "downfall" of The Pirate Bay is just the latest example.


When the popular p2p file-sharing site disappeared from the web, pulled d0wn Swedish police, the once believed king of online piracy had been dethroned—and pretty much nothing happened at all. On Dec. 8, 101.5 million IP addresses were torrenting, as tracked by anti-piracy firm Excipio, according to Variety. When Pirate Bay went dark that number dropped by six million only to climb right back into the 100s two days later, in line with Excipio's calculated daily average.

What does that mean? The police seizure of Pirate Bay is like the equivalent of a little Swedish boy sticking his finger in a dam eight years after the dam was destroyed. The flood is already here. Deal with it. No matter what government seizures or silly PSAs film companies and publishers try to dream up, they're never going to work. This is really just the same tale retold. When the Netherlands ordered ISP's to block The Pirate Bay in 2012, follow-up research showed that torrenting only increased during the ban, which ended earlier this year.

So if there was any lingering question as to what The Pirate Bay's downfall (though it is showing signs of life) would mean for torrenting in the future, the answer is nothing. Torrenting and the internet or no longer separable—As long as you have one, you'll always have the other. If KickassTorrents fell tomorrow another site would take its place because the Internet abhors a vacuum. [Variety]