A huge police raid in 2006 failed to permanently take down The Pirate Bay yet what appeared to be a more discreet attack in early December has done much more damage and gathered more headlines. We take a look back on one of the torrent scene's most significant months on record.

May 31, 2006 was a momentous day for everyone involved in the BitTorrent scene.

The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most famous torrent sites, was smashed to its knees. Dozens of police, acting on information provided by the global entertainment industries via local anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran, raided Swedish datacenter PRQ and seized all of the site’s hardware.

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, three days later The Pirate Bay was back online utilizing a backup that Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, had made of the site. In a public speech heralding the site’s return, Neij excited gathered crowds in Sweden.

“It’s a pleasure to announce that the Pirate Bay is back online. In your face, Hollywood,” the Swede declared. TPB was back.

TPB Back online in 2006 – Image from TPB AFK

In the years that followed The Pirate Bay grew in size and reputation, an apparently unstoppable behemoth supported by a hard-core following renewed determination.

But while the masses enjoyed the spoils of the site for years to come, in November 2014 history caught up with Neij when he was arrested at the Laos/Thai border, shipped back to Sweden and locked in a prison cell.

Several weeks later, on a December morning more than eight years after the original raid, Antipiratbyran – now known as Rights Alliance – showed the world that they also have extremely long memories when it comes to The Pirate Bay.

Following a new investigation and presentations to the authorities, police descended on a datacenter in Nacka and once again ripped The Pirate Bay offline.

The events of 2006 and the Megaupload case aside, never before had so much attention been focused on the shutdown of a file-sharing site. Tens of millions of worried Pirate Bay users sat in disbelief as the hours passed by. Some thought the downtime was related to technical issues. Others believed news of a fresh raid was a hoax. It was neither.

As file-sharers and interested observers absorbed developments, one train of thought persisted through most conversations. Hadn’t The Pirate Bay become raid-proof? Wasn’t its virtual server setup immune to the attentions of the police? Who was in charge of making the backups this time around and why isn’t the site back online already?

The days passed and it became increasingly clear – this wasn’t The Pirate Bay of 2006. Times – and people – had changed.

The team that had driven the site to glory during the last decade had long since parted ways and the collective defiance of Piratbyran (the Pirate Bay’s founding group) had dissipated following a decade of pursuing still unsurpassed culture sharing ideals.

“We were not that surprised by the raid. That is something that is a part of this game. We couldn’t care less really,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TF in the wake of the shutdown.

“We have however taken this opportunity to give ourselves a break. How long are we supposed to keep going?”

So what could be done to fill the vacuum before any Pirate Bay return? Interestingly it was previous efforts to limit the availability of The Pirate Bay in countries such as the Netherlands, United Kingdom and elsewhere that provided the springboard.

Sites and domains that previously acted as mirrors and proxies to TPB suddenly transformed themselves into clones of the famous site. Some early efforts were controversial, with fears over impostors and malware unsettling the masses. Others (such as ThePirateBay.com.ua) became the closest representation of what the site once was, with user names and a high percentage of comments now restored.

But despite the claims and suggestions, not a single one of these sites is the real Pirate Bay resurrected. Nevertheless, many have flourished simply by virtue of similar looking domains and a half decent torrent index. However, one of the most interesting developments was launched by the team responsible for launching isoHunt.com clone, isoHunt.to.

TheOpenBay project is an attempt at open-sourcing a Pirate Bay-like site, and not without success. The initiative has resulted in hundreds of mini TPB clones and the sky-rocketing of the project to the top spot on developer platform Github.

OpenBay has real potential and provides an easier route into the torrent scene for budding admins, but ultimately this platform provides an alternative, not a replacement, to The Pirate Bay.

The disappearance of The Pirate Bay has been somewhat of a roller-coaster. Emotions have been running high all month, with hopes for a return and/or a worthy replacement at the forefront of millions of users’ minds.

Dreams of a grand return were boosted four days before Christmas when the original Pirate Bay domain – ThePirateBay.se – burst back to life. While the famous front page was missing, an elaborate pirate flag has waved on the site ever since. Alongside other cryptic hints, the flag is keeping the pirate spirit alive and hopes of a resurrection with it.

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has been down a record-setting three weeks. In all of its history the site has never been offline for such a long time which raises some obvious questions. Will the site ever return or is the delay down to important technical issues which need to be overcome in order for the site to come back up and stay up?

Whatever the reason, it now seems that 2015 will begin without The Pirate Bay and if that is to be the case, somehow the community needs to come to terms with that. Will things ever be the same? Perhaps not. But file-sharing did not begin with The Pirate Bay and will not end with it either.