The Pirate Bay celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday. A milestone in Internet history and in honor of this occasion we asked several members of its founding group to share their most valuable moments and proudest accomplishments. The former members of Piratbyrån also look ahead to the site's future and without exception call for drastic change.

When The Pirate Bay was first launched in 2003 by the Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån, no one imagined it would turn into an Internet icon.

The site has secured a spot in Internet history and on this celebratory weekend we invite several early Piratbyrån members to share their thoughts on the site’s accomplishments, their most memorable moments, and their ideas for the future.

Marcin De Kaminski, Rasmus Fleischer, Tobias Andersson and Sara Sajjad moved on to other projects following their days on The Pirate Bay but all have played an important role in turning the Pirate Bay idea into reality.

Marcin De Kaminski

Marcin was one of the early members of Piratbyrån. He also founded the net activist cluster Telecomix. Marcin is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology of Law at Lund University focusing on Internet communities including The Pirate Bay.

Accomplishments: I have most of all enjoyed seeing the diversity of stuff being shared on TPB, and now – being a researcher with P2P as one area of focus – also the diversity of incitements for using the site. Our studies among TPB users have shown a great spread within the user base, both in terms of geography and reasons for file sharing. Truly fascinating.

Memorable moments: Being a part of the TPB cluster for just a short part of the early beginning, I think what is most important to remember about TPB is the fact that it started on a crappy laptop sharing the really bad *DSL connection of the Mexican employer of Gottfrid Svartholm.

As the initial plan was to found a small BitTorrent tracker for an extended circle of friends, no one could predict what was coming.

The Future: Besides still being an infrastructure for exchanging files between internet users, most of the ideas and ideals of the early TPB have been lost.

I would have hoped that the internet community at this time would have replaced TPB with something new and more innovative instead of stagnating in some kind of passive mode where progress is hard to see.

Rasmus Fleischer

Rasmus was one of the early members of Piratbyrån. He is a writer, researcher, debater, musician and runs the CopyRiot blog. Rasmus finished his PhD thesis on “music’s political economy” last year.

Accomplishments: That’s a very hard question. Technically speaking, The Pirate Bay’s most significant contribution is of course the unbelievable amounts of peer-to-peer traffic that it has been aiding. Economically speaking, I think that the harm caused to Hollywood by file-sharing is not only real but also excellent.

On the other hand, it has helped catalyze so-called “new business models” but I would never feel the slightest bit of pride over that shit. In the end, I guess the most remarkable thing about The Pirate Bay is the insurrectionary spirit of its refusal to go down, which on a symbolic level became an extraordinarily powerful thing as it resurrected following the 2006 raid.

Memorable moments: When was it The Pirate Bay, when was it the internet, and when was it simply hanging out with friends (and strangers)? Honestly speaking, I don’t know where to draw the line. But the days immediately after the big raid, in the early summer of 2006, that was somehow magical.

The first week of the Spectrial in early 2009 was a very memorable time as well. In retrospect, these are moments in time which the anti-pirates might now celebrate as successful attacks against The Pirate Bay, but in real-time it was all intensely complex and most of all FUN.

The Future: I think that The Pirate Bay is in a process of slow decay, which has been obvious for the last three years. Its basic failure was that it become such an icon that people began to celebrate The Pirate Bay rather than to copy it, although being copied was the real goal – not to be the biggest, but to spawn a hydra.

Today the best thing would be to get rid of The Pirate Bay and start over with new solutions for free and decentralized file-sharing, not too dependent on web search engines. To me, such a quest would be in the spirit of the Bay.

Sara Sajjad

Sara was one of the early members of Piratbyrån.

Accomplishments: I love the educational parts. Most of all I adore the way ordinary people wanted more, and got more. Like kids from school emailing questionnaires, and getting answers, from day one.

It’s also nice to see all the curiosity from companies, journalists and organizations that could be “on the other side” but where clever enough to understand that TPB made something completely new, and that it made an outstandingly brave statement only by existing.

Memorable moments: The fact that TPB got to be on Fox News’ Strategy Room for 50 minutes in 2009 without a bad word is pretty cool to me. I consider it to be a sign of world domination.

The polar pirate prize gala we had early on, is also super-special since it was one of the first connections between afk and Internet for TPB.

All the memories of the emotions, from bad to good, from celebrations to condemning everyone in touch, I think that’s the most important thing. Making people think, feel, talk, getting involved, resisting and fighting over TPB.

The Future: If I could decide, the site would be shut down in all ways possible. It should never belong to someone or something else than itself, and I don’t want it to belong to the wrong people.

Tobias Andersson

Tobias served as an early spokesperson of both Piratbyrån and The Pirate Bay. He has been responsible for The Promo Bay project and regularly speaks on Internet freedom related topics at conferences all over the world. Tobias is currently studying at a local university in Sweden.

Accomplishments: Politically, I think The Pirate Bay came perfectly in time. Powerful forces try to establish the concept of intellectual property and suddenly we have a generation of people who question this concept. Partly because file sharing became mainstream, but also because of the rebellious attitude of The Pirate Bay. There are so many of us that have so much to win on society not accepting this concept. And very few that have a lot to lose. So it is indeed interesting times.

Memorable moments: The site taught me so much. Early on we were on a constant hubris, as almost everyone loved us and worldwide media published anything we did or said. The emails and messages we got from people from all over the world, thanking us for providing them with something different that they couldn’t get in their locked up regimes.

One of the funniest memories is (and I know this has happened to several of my friends) when I had participated in the local media about The Pirate Bay and I was stopped on the street by two huge cops. They asked if I was that guy from The Pirate Bay. Sure I said, looking around for an escape route, when they then asked me which torrent client was the best and what all these codes like XViD and TS meant. They just wanted to get the latest Fast & Furious movie…

The Future: It’s fantastic that The Pirate Bay made it to its 10th birthday, it really is an extraordinary achievement. But now it’s time for something new. The coming copy fights will be on a totally other level. I’m talking about the 3D printing revolution. In a few years, millions of blueprints of tools, car parts, clothing and weapons will be up for download. If there is a safe platform.

The Pirate Bay in its current form can withstand the pressure from quite harmless industries like the movie and music industries. But when car, oil, and weapons industries and all the countries that depend on them will start to feel threatened, we can’t depend on a few people to sacrifice themselves.

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TorrentFreak also asked two of the current moderators of the site to share their thoughts. These can be found here.