Fabled BitTorrent site SuprNova.org will soon be back online. The one-time darling of the BitTorrent scene will be resurrected by none other than... The Pirate Bay. Yet while file-sharing fans cheer everywhere, we wonder if this game of cat and mouse isn't about more than just resurrecting an icon of days passed. If reports are to be believed, The Pirate Bay is raking in millions of dollars each year, and SuprNova's rebirth could mean even more booty for them.

SuprNova was launched in 2000 by Andrej Preston, a Slovenian teenager. The popular BitTorrent tracker was shuttered in 2004 after a legal net began to close around the site, and its founder decided to play it safe. The domain has been in limbo for some time but has now been transferred to The Pirate Bay ownership, who have plans to relaunch it but have not set a date.

News of the impending relaunch first surfaced at TorrentFreak and Slyck.com, and Slyck talked to Preston about why he was giving up the site. As it turns out, Preston is heading to film school in the US and doesn't want to be associated with the site. Despite this, he's concerned that the site retain its community focus, and The Pirate Bay has apparently pledged to do just that.

Given that The Pirate Bay already operates a tremendously busy site, why the interest in bringing back SuprNova? Given the fame of the old site, it is still a popular "brand" that resonates with P2P users. It's a chance to draw even more traffic to Pirate Bay properties, pillaging even more gold from advertisers who are paying up to get their slogans in front of millions of eyeballs, even if they are in the virtual bay of "pirates."

Nevertheless, talking with News.com, Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde said that the resurrection of SuprNova is all about making a point: you can't keep a good file-sharing site down. "We want to send a finger to the ones who try to stop sites like (SuprNova and The Pirate Bay)," he said. "It's not right to close them down and this is proof that you can't. I think this is the first time in history that any closed file-sharing site has returned, and that's just awesome for us to be part of."

The money won't hurt, either. A series of articles in Swedish newspapers last year revealed connections between The Pirate Bay and Swiss and Israeli firms (English translation), and suggested that the company was pulling in a significant amount of cash from lucrative ad deals, in excess of $100,000 per month in Sweden alone.

Of course, those financial details stem from an ad sales rep and may not reflect anything but what a sales guy claims (although The Pirate Bay does have both advertising and an astounding amount of traffic). That may not matter to the MPAA and its allies, though, who have only to point to point in the direction of the thriving Pirate Bay when they're looking to make arguments about the commercial aspects of the dark underbelly of file sharing.

Unlike its early days, though, the new SuprNova will likely have deep pockets to fund a defense or evasive action, should it need to. If not, the there will be that much more booty to share among the crew, or perhaps to make another run at buying something Sealand-esque.

The Pirate Bay managed to survive a broadside attack on its operations last year, despite US involvement. But the US has also seen recent successes in its whack-a-mole war with AllOfMP3, and the Bush administration isn't particularly shy about tossing its weight around under the auspices of trade policy and negotiation. Don't be too surprised when the US renews its attempts to thwart the organization. Then we'll see if Sunde is ultimately right when he says that you can't stop The Pirate Bay.