Supporters of the pending PIPA/SOPA anti-piracy bills often use The Pirate Bay as a prime example of a website that can be taken out under the new legislation. But is that really the case? The Pirate Bay team has been silent on the issue, until now. As it turns out, the people behind the popular torrent site don't believe the laws will do much to stop them, but they do fear for the future of the Internet.

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to being censored. Finland, Denmark and Italy are just a few of the many countries where ISPs have been ordered to make the website inaccessible to their users.

But on the horizon looms threats of a different kind, the PIPA and SOPA bills.

While SOPA has been put on hold temporarily, the PIPA bill is going full steam ahead. If it passes, The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites may be the first to be targeted. Depending on the final text of the bills, these sites may be blocked by ISPs, censored by search engines, and in some cases they may even lose their domain names.

These developments cause some concern among the people running The Pirate Bay, but interestingly enough they don’t fear for themselves.

“Of course we’re worried. Not so much for The Pirate Bay, as there are many workarounds, but for democratic reasons,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak.

Indeed, recent history has shown that no matter what technical measures are put in use to block The Pirate Bay, the site and its users find ways around it. Whether it’s a backup domain, alternative DNS-servers or proxy sites, PIPA and SOPA can be easily circumvented. In addition, the site’s advertising partners don’t fall within reach of the US Government.

Anticipating future censorship, The Pirate Bay yesterday released a modified version of the CGIPROXY software so anyone with access to a webserver can easily start their own Pirate Bay proxy. And since The Pirate Bay plans to ditch .torrent files completely, the resources that have to be invested are minimal.

For opponents of the PIPA and SOPA bills, The Pirate Bay’s stance is yet even more ammunition to get the pending legislation thrown out completely. When even the biggest target isn’t worried at all, why put the future of the Internet at risk?

The Pirate Bay itself is amazed by the unprecedented power the entertainment industry has in Washington.

“It’s crazy what politicians will do in the name of copyright! They are either totally paid off, stupid or copyright holders. Or all of them – that’s not as uncommon as you might think. The worst part is that it’s so obvious that pretty much everyone in and outside the US, including major corporations, are against this bill,” the Pirate Bay insider said.

“The minority will now decide to get to control the majority, for reasons that only help the minority and not society as a whole. It’s disgusting. If the law was discussed in Iran or China, we might understand it – and criticize it just as much. But this… come on!”

The Pirate Bay urges the International community to take a clear stand in the issue, preventing the US from taking control of the Internet. The European Parliament set the first step in this direction recently, by condemning domain name seizures, but there is still a long way to go according to The Pirate Bay.

“It’s obvious that the US has too much influence on the internet and the world’s politics. SOPA/PIPA is one of many newer laws that is passed in the US but really is in effect outside of their borders. The UN and other bodies should actually fight back and say that this is not OK, ” the insider said.

“The internet is a global infrastructure and can’t be run in one single country. Besides fighting SOPA, we must also take away the possibility for a single country to rule over the global infrastructure.”

For now, however, the battle is far from over. SOPA can be revived any minute and PIPA is still very much alive and up for vote in Congress next week. As a protest, many websites large and small will go on strike tomorrow, but not The Pirate Bay, for the torrent site it’s business as usual.