A raid conducted in Sweden last week resulted in the shutting down of The Pirate Bay. Since then, other websites have stepped up to carry the crown, but the current crew behind The Pirate Bay has been silent on the entire matter – that is until now



“We were not that surprised by the raid. That is something that is a part of this game. We couldn’t care less really,” said Mr 10100100000 to TorrentFreak via an encrypted channel.



“We have however taken this opportunity to give ourselves a break. How long are we supposed to keep going? To what end? We were a bit curious to see how the public would react,” Mr 10100100000 added.



The Pirate Bay has lasted for more than a decade and, until recently, had never experienced more than three days of downtime. But while law enforcement officials might have considered shutting down TPB as a huge success, its effect on the amount of online piracy has had no impact, according to anti-piracy firm Excipio.



As to whether or not the people behind TPB will revive the site Mr 10100100000 told TF, “Will we reboot? We don’t know yet. But if and when we do, it’ll be with a bang.”

With the shutting down of the “real” TPB, there have been many copycat websites attempting to take advantage of the void left behind. But rather than be annoyed by the many copycats out there taking advantage of the situation, the TPB crew appears to be fine with it.



According to Mr 10100100000, “Copycats are to be seen as a higher form of the proxies. If [Pirate Bay’s] code wouldn’t be so shitty we would make it public for everyone to use, so that everyone could start their own bay.”



Mr 10100100000 added, “Of course there is a problem if sites like [thepiratebay].ee try to scam people. But overall, we’d love to see a thousand Pirate Bays.”



Referencing the Kopimi mantra, which is a misspelling of the phrase “copy me” that refers to the idea that all media should be allowed to legally be shared, Mr 10100100000 concludes, “We’ve always lived by Kopimi. We love being cloned. It would be amazing if, like in the classic movie Spartacus, everyone could stand up and say ‘I am The Pirate Bay’.”