It's one of the longest existences in the entire file-sharing space and bar none it has been the most eventful. We're talking about the life of The Pirate Bay, the world's most resilient BitTorrent site. Today the site celebrates its 8th birthday, a massive achievement which may not ever be bettered in terms of longevity, sheer volume of members and material distributed.

By now the story of The Pirate Bay (TPB) and its humble Swedish-only beginnings is a well worn tale. The site’s roots can be traced back to Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), a pro-piracy organization founded in August 2003.

With the legendary BitTorrent indexer Suprnova riding high but with no significant file-sharing network in Sweden at the time, Piratbyrån decided to fill that gap. For TPB founders TiAMO, Anakata and Brokep, the relatively new BitTorrent protocol would be the weapon of choice.

“We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay,” recalls Brokep, aka Peter Sunde.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and over 60,000 torrent files. What followed in the years to come was both dramatic growth and turmoil on a grand scale, as The Pirate Bay became a media distribution monster, loved by its users but despised by the mainstream entertainment industries.

Over the years The Pirate Bay was hosted in several countries and its founders subjected to both civil and criminal lawsuits and prosecutions. Despite seemingly overwhelming odds, the site refused to give in.

“We shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be,” is the site’s latest mantra. On past performances of sheer defiance, few will doubt them.

So here we are, in 2011, exactly 8 years on from the site’s creation. Well, perhaps not exactly 8 years. The Pirate Bay commemorated its 5th birthday in November 2008 amid a haze of uncertainty over when the precise celebrations should take place. But for the site’s millions of followers, a month or two here or there will be of little concern.

“So it has become our 8th birthday! Time flies huh?” the site’s new owners, whoever they are and wherever they may be, declared today.

“We’ve said it before and we”ll say it again. This would not have happened without you! Outside of the bay a lot of stuff has happened during these 8 years. A lot of good and some bad.

“We admins are positive dudes and dudettes who like to think that the world is moving forward and not backwards. That’s partly what the site is about. Spreading culture around the globe so that maybe people will understand each other a bit more,” they add.

Traditionally that ‘spreading of culture’ – the exchange of digital files online – would have taken place among fairly niche, need-to-know file-sharing circles. One of The Pirate Bay’s biggest legacies will be that it cast aside those elitist chains, successfully penetrated the mainstream media and psyche, and achieved spreading of culture on a biblical scale.

And it’s not over yet.

“Heading in to our 9th year we are preparing some huge news. We can’t really tell yet but it will be huuuuuge!” the site’s operators promise.

The Pirate Bay has given the file-sharing world much, and quite possibly its Concorde-moment. By definition there’s both happiness and sadness there – the bittersweet taste of an era that has provided so much but may never be repeated. But better to have lived and loved, than to have lived and never loved at all.

Happy Birthday Pirate Bay, we’ll stick around for next year’s celebrations. We know you will.