The co-founder of notorious piracy site the Pirate Bay has hit out against the “piracy movement” calling it “dead” and “pointless”.



Peter Sunde, piracy operator turned commentator, says that spending time and energy fixated on breaking copyright and the illegal distribution of movies, TV shows, music, books and software is a lost cause.

“I for one don’t give a flying fuck. I don’t care if the ‘pirate movement’ lives, exists or whatever. I only care about the causes,” Sunde writes on the piracy news site Torrent Freak. “As I’ve said numerous times over and over again, we lost those battles. Now some people are refusing to give them up, in true Monty Python spirit, claiming that their beloved ‘pirate movement’ is not dead. Mixing apples and pears.”

Sunde claims that while the pirate moment is dead, the issues that birthed it in early 2000s haven’t been resolved. He says that the focus has been pulled away from topics such as censorship, access to information and culture and freedom of speech, to wrongly focus on the piracy enabling organisations and “nostalgic icons” such as the Pirate Bay.

“Give up the idea of pirates being cool. They’re not. My biggest regret in my part in all of this was to use the word pirate. Not even Johnny Depp can make pirates look cool – and he manages to make cocaine-dealers look awesome. Pirates are awful. And today’s pirates – the ones in Somalia – also lost their battles. Good! So let’s get rid of this stupid culture of having a stupid culture,” writes Sunde.

The about-turn by one of the founding fathers of the digital piracy movement follows his disowning of the current state of the site he created when it was raided by Swedish police taking it offline for months. Sunde said at the time that perhaps the Pirate Bay, which was now run by others not connected with the original founders, should stay dead and not return having failed in its ideological mission to free content from draconian measures of media companies.

Now Sunde is saying the same thing is true of the pirate movement: “Be something more awesome. Be a world citizen that cares about the same topics. Join other parties and make them understand the topics at hand.”

“Just don’t sing songs about pirate booty, looting and shit.”