Late Monday night, two new Pirate Parties – those in Catalunya and Norway – started delivering bandwidth to The Pirate Bay. This follows the extortionate threats placed last week against the Swedish Pirate Party by the Rightousness Alliance (formerly the “Anti-Pirate Bureau”) and multiple actions in solidarity with that situation. Being able to stand up against a menacing gale as an international movement is a sign of maturity in the face of dying-but-ruthless adversaries.

The news was supposed to break at 9am sharp on Tuesday morning, but late Monday night, people on the Net were eager to see how the Swedish Pirate Party would respond to the threats from the Righteousness Alliance. The Net would itself tell the story of the move, which I’ll be returning to – the threat letter from the copyright industry that had arrived a week earlier didn’t just threaten the existence of the party as such, but also targeted individuals in the party – “board members and other representatives”.

It is a despicable state of affairs when you have certain inalienable rights, like freedom of speech and the messenger immunity, but lack the financial strength required to exercise those rights by affirming them in court. In Sweden, it was not a matter of finding out in detail what the legal playing field looked like – the lay of the land doesn’t matter when you know the dice are loaded. You could be as much in the moral and legal right as you wanted; we know since before that the court system in Sweden is hopelessly corrupt when it comes to copyright monopoly cases in general, and The Pirate Bay cases in particular.

In essence, it was a game of “Calvinball” – going up against an opponent with the power to change the rules mid-game, and make up new rules out of thin air as the game progressed, without ever telling their opponent.

In the face of this hard decision whether to gamble about the rest of your life with loaded dice to fight for something you believe in, I’m particularly grateful that the operators of The Pirate Bay spared the Swedish Pirate Party the angst, and moved in solidarity with the party before a decision had to be made.

Some oldmedia have erroneously reported that the Swedish Pirate Party decided to fold under threat from the Righteousness Alliance. This is factually wrong on the critical point of the issue. We never reached the decision point of whether or not to fold, thanks to the returned solidarity of The Pirate Bay’s operators, who moved out to other Pirate Parties on their own before that point. By the threat deadline, a decision of whether to fold or not had become irrelevant, as The Pirate Bay was already being supplied bandwidth by other Pirate Parties than the Swedish one.

When I decided to provide The Pirate Bay with bandwidth pro bono in the spring of 2010, in my then-capacity as party leader of the Swedish Pirate Party and as a clearly political activity, the average time from their sign-on with an ISP to the first threatening phone call to that ISP from the Righteousness Alliance was 20 minutes (yes, twenty minutes). I decided to take a stand for fundamental rights ahead of the 2010 elections, calculating that the copyright industry didn’t want to give the Pirate Party that kind of free attention just ahead of the elections. I was right: the copyright industry backed down, and didn’t come back until now, three years later, probably reminded of this state of affairs by the TPB AFK movie where it is mentioned.

I’m happy that my decision in 2010 delayed the moves of this reign of terror from copyright monopoly extremists from twenty minutes to three years. But I’m also delighted to see how we have matured as an international movement for liberty and against this kind of extremism and reign of terror.

That’s why I am particularly happy that we can still stand united as a movement against this rampant corruption in the Swedish legal system and elsewhere. Late Monday night, before the Tuesday deadline, the Internet would tell a different story if you asked it directly where The Pirate Bay was. The net would say that The Pirate Bay was no longer with the Swedish Pirate Party, but with the Norwegian Pirate Party, in Oslo. At least, that’s what the net reported from where I was at the time – from Lisbon, Portugal.

[email protected]:~$ traceroute thepiratebay.se traceroute to thepiratebay.se (194.71.107.15), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.5.106 (192.168.5.106) 2 194-79-94-16.nr.ip.pt (194.79.94.16) 3 195.23.196.91 (195.23.196.91) 4 195-23-199-41.net.novis.pt (195.23.199.41) 5 195-23-98-253.net.novis.pt (195.23.98.253) 6 81.52.179.209 (81.52.179.209) 7 gigabitethernet16-0-0.madcr3.Madrid.opentransit.net (193.251.129.234) 8 po1-101-10G.ar2.MAD1.gblx.net (64.215.195.9) 9 PHONERA-NETWORKS-AB.TenGigabitEthernet6-2.ar1.OSL2.gblx.net (67.17.211.190) 10 82.96.1.213 (82.96.1.213) 11 ge-1-1.oslo-cr-1.piratpartiet.no (80.252.165.2)

But that’s not enough. The Catalan Pirate Party is also serving the Pirate Bay with bandwidth (and it’s kind of random whether you will access The Pirate Bay through Oslo or Barcelona). For each Pirate Party that is threatened by the dying dinosaurs, two more Pirate Parties can take their place as bandwidth providers to The Pirate Bay.

There are 63 (sixty-three) Pirate Parties. And counting.

The Pirate Bay announced the move themselves late Monday night with a custom logo, but their description of the events taking place left out a few details. Their story on moving from the Swedish to the Norwegian and Catalan Pirate Parties read, in full:

“A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The quicker this is done the higher the final score will be. Current score: zero.”

The first comment on the story sums up first impressions well. In all simplicity, it reads, “Lolwut?”

Pirate Bay operator Winston elaborates how this was Pirate Bay’s decision in returned solidarity with the Swedish Pirate Party’s past hospitality: “As some of you may know, we’re 99% cloud based today. We have, though, enjoyed the great company of the Swedish Pirate Party. As they have gotten a severe legal threat (that will cost a lot to defend against), we’ve taken the decision to move on to Norway and Spain.”

He also hints at more changes to come in the near future: “This is not permanent, though. Next week (hopefully), we’ll announce some MAJOR changes to the site. Now don’t worry, everything will look the same to you. The changes are all under the hood. Let’s just say that it will change a lot of things for a lot of people.”

In a press release on the matter from the Swedish Pirate Party Tuesday morning, the party leader Anna Troberg adds that the Swedish Pirate Party is considering pressing charges against the Righteousness Alliance:

“The party has a board meeting in a few days”, says Troberg. “I will recommend the board to file a police report against the Rights Alliance for unlawful coercion. It is important to determine precisely how forgiving the system is to those who try to abuse the judicial system to silence others.”

The Norwegian Pirates have also published a statement (in Norwegian), where they announce their role as bandwidth supplier and highlight The Pirate Bay’s importance for artistry and civil liberties.