Is the end near for The Pirate Bay? The past year has been rough for the popular torrent site, specifically after their operation was raided by Swedish authorities in 2014. Even though the site relaunched a short time later, it appears that the revival was short-lived. Now there are reports of new server errors that are preventing users from being able to access it. What could this mean for the future of the popular site?

Yibada reports that The Pirate Bay has gone down at least twice in the past two weeks. The popular torrent site is currently experiencing “Host 522 Errors,” but that’s not the only detail surrounding this latest news, which has some people thinking piracy sites are being targeted in another wave of attempts at shutting them down. Of course, that suspicion has only been inflamed by reports that TPB’s internet service provider may be in the process of being sued.

Inverse reports that Bredbandsbolaget (The Pirate Bay’s ISP) could be the target of a lawsuit surrounding their refusal to block the piracy site from their servers. The Swedish internet service provider has made statements before regarding requests to block TPB.

“Bredbandsbolaget does not block content or services based on individual organizations’ requests. There is no legal obligation for operators to block either The Pirate Bay or Swefilmer.”

Now they are awaiting a decision by the Stockholm District Court regarding whether or not they should be forced to block the site. Could this pending decision by a panel of Swedish judges have anything to do with recent server outages on The Pirate Bay and other torrenting websites? At one point, users on Reddit complained that TPB was down along with at least three other sites, which included YIFY and Popcorn Time as well as Kickass Torrents.



Google Refuses to Block the Pirate Bay on ‘Free Speech Principles’ https://t.co/0KyW4J2Gun pic.twitter.com/QXEr9OsHsr — stan stewart (@muz4now) October 23, 2015

Even though The Pirate Bay is constantly targeted by media companies and legal authorities, it still remains the most popular torrent website on the internet. Torrent Freak reports that the court will decide whether or not TPB will simply be blocked from Sweden altogether. This could come as a huge blow not only to the admin of the site, but to the hundreds of thousands of netizens who frequently use it. It will also be a small victory for big media companies like Sony, Warner Music, and Universal. The folks representing these media companies have argued that the ISP serving TPB is simply facilitating online piracy by refusing to deny service to TPB admins.



[UPDATE] The Pirate Bay Is Offline Again: Host Error Leads To TPB Going Down ∞ 27 http://t.co/NUc3L0BnOT pic.twitter.com/3O2H8ntq1j — July (@aunewse) October 19, 2015

why is the pirate bay not working? ☹️ — spooky nøems (@xvenomlycan) October 24, 2015

PopCorn Time muerto, The Pirate Bay y YTS caídos. pic.twitter.com/CWa3eaM3wA — Jorge Calle (@AtrumGeost) October 24, 2015

If The Pirate Bay’s history is any indicator of their future, this all could just be another minor bump in the road for them. After all, they’ve been taken down numerous times over the several years that the site has operated — only to come back time and time again. At this time, folks on social media are discussing the possible outcome for TPB, but they’re also sharing various mirror proxies for the site, which are still operating. Nonetheless, the main Pirate Bay site is down and has been down more than once in two weeks while news circulates about possible closure.

Do you think it’s the end for The Pirate Bay, or is this going to be another failure on behalf of huge media companies? Whatever happens, it’s likely that attacking TPB won’t put a true end to internet piracy.

[Photo: via Wikipedia]