The notorious Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker has reached yet another milestone as it serves more than 12 million peers. The site is also throwing down a challenge: They want every Pirate Bay peer to tell a friend - and get 20 million on the tracker soon.

It gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger – and more notorious. And more popular.

Today, The Pirate Bay announced that they have achieved an amazing 12,000,000 peers on the tracker, surpassing the previously-amazing 10,000,000 announcement just a short while ago.

Interestingly, and particularly so for fans of private trackers, brokep announced that since 2004, there has been a massive increase in the number of users actually seeding files, rather than just being regular peers. In 2004, around 20% of the tracker population were seeds and by 2005 this had increased to 25-30%. By 2006, the seeders had increased to an impressive 35% and 2007 saw further gains to 40%.

In 2008, the seeders amount to an impressive 50% of total tracker peers, further indication if it was needed that the desire to share clearly trumps the efforts of anti-piracy agencies.

Brokep of The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak: “We have more seeders than leechers now. It was like 25% seeders 75% leechers [in 2004/2005], since then it’s gradually shifted over to 50/50”

But a measly 12,000,000 peers isn’t enough for the Pirate Bay crew. They want more – and more. And we end with a call out to the community from Brokep: “What we want you to do is to spread the word to your friends and make more people share files! Let’s break 15 million – and 20!”

It won’t be long in coming.