After Swedish authorities raided the Pirate Bay back in December, one of the Web’s most popular torrent sites went dark. In January, the site came back with a countdown: People would once again be able to share files—including movies, games, and porn—on Feb. 1.

It appears the Pirate Bay has kept its promise, and even delivered a day early. The site is back on thepiratebay.se. Torrent links are live; however others, including “register” and “contact” links, still give you an error page.

The homepage depicts an orange phoenix—representative of the site rising from the ashes.

The Pirate Bay

The site could quickly reboot its services thanks to cloud infrastructure and independent virtual machines. When authorities come, it’s easy to pull the plug and start again elsewhere.

But even so, the Pirate Bay’s downtime was much longer than anticipated, giving rise to a number of spin-offs.

Although the site is back online, Torrent Freak reports that turmoil among the staff has caused a rift, and a number of former staff members have left the site. They are planning on starting their own torrent service and don’t believe the one announced on Saturday is the official service.

H/T Torrent Freak | Photo via Oliver Bruchez/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)