In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked for "assistance" from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing to be shared on The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay, however, does not plan to take anything down, and renamed their tracker to The Beijing Bay.

The IOC is getting used to censoring the Internet, and has asked the Swedish government to help remove Olympic torrents from The Pirate Bay – which they claimed have been downloaded more than 1 million times. IOC also wants the government to assist in preventing (!) clips from the Olympics closing ceremonies to be shared.

Apparently the IOC has been reading the article we wrote last week, which showed that millions of people are downloading the Olympic opening ceremony on BitTorrent. In the meantime, several other Olympic clips have been posted. Although these are not as popular as the opening ceremony, the gymnastics finals and other events get close to 50.000 downloads.

The press secretary of the Minister of Justice has stated that it is primarily clips from the Opening ceremonies that the IOC wants to stop. The Committee also questions the legal situation and wants to be informed on whether they can take measures themselves to prohibit videos of the Olympics to be shared.

It’s interesting that the IOC chose to contact the Swedish government, instead of The Pirate Bay. They probably realize that sending a takedown notice wouldn’t be that effective. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak: “I think it’s good that IOC understands that they will get nowhere with sending a legal threat to us. It shows they’re smart and without manners.”

“We were going to ignore the Olympics, but now we’re loading our cannons. Our weapons of mass distribution are pointed towards China.” The first action The Pirate Bay took is creating a new logo for the site, and renaming it to The Beijing Bay. In true Pirate Bay style the front page logo now links to the tag “give us the gold,” Peter said.

The tag refers to the incident with the Swedish wrestler last week, who tossed away his bronze medal after he lost his chance on a Gold medal because of an error made by the jury. Peter told us: “I also hope that the Swedish government will report back to them and tell them to give us the gold that the IOC stole from the Swedish wrestler. And to tell them to not host the Olympics in a country with poor respect for human rights.”

Most BitTorrent sites do take down torrents when they are asked to. However, none of the admins TorrentFreak spoke to received a takedown request so far. Of course, the solution to IOC’s BitTorrent problem is easy. By not televising the closing ceremonies, the IOC not only hinders filesharers, but also makes sure VHS tapers worldwide won’t be able to steal the Olympic spirit. Sounds like a winner.