One minute they’re up in their room sharing files and the next they’re incurring the wrath of intellectual property holders everywhere. This year — September to be precise — marks the tenth anniversary of when the equally beloved and despised The Pirate Bay file-sharing site was founded, enabling people the world over to watch and listen to media of all kinds without even having to pay a dime to do so; a quality which really hasn’t earned it any popularity points within the film and music industries. To commemorate this milestone in unrepentant copyright infringement, the Computer Museum in Linköping, Sweden has placed the site’s very first server on permanent display as a part of its “50 years of file-sharing” wing to be revered by techies, and possibly smashed by crowbar-wielding corporate goons, everywhere. The fact we’re treating modern technology with the same respect as ancient religious relics has to be saying something about our current culture.
The only cosmetic change made to the server was the placement of a transparent panel that not only showcases the inner workings of the hardware, but is also inscribed with a short history about The Pirate Bay and its founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. Translated from Swedish, it reads:
Stockholm, in the year of 2004. In the home of Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, at his parent’s place, this ordinary computer is running day and night. With a special software and a standard broadband connection this machine was the beginning for one of the most loved, hated and debated phenomena in modern time – the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.
In less than ten years The Pirate Bay has become a contemporary historical phenomenon, due to its distinguished position in the file-sharing debate. The discussions that have sprung from this simple computer server concerns serious subjects as freedom of speech, global democracy and of course the sole existence of copyright.
Support groups and political parties have gathered around the now well-known banner of The Pirate Bay. Together they stand in the center of a cultural revolution. A revolution that begun in a dark grey metal box under a bed.
In addition to the server, other items of note from The Pirate Bay’s history include three more servers that had been in operation alongside the primary one, a laptop, tower case, and a red server box. As we said earlier, the server will be on permanent display, meaning that our children, and their children’s children, will able to see just how The Pirate Bay made ancient man’s dream of watching Pauly Shore’s Brother in Law for free a reality.
(via TorrentFreak, image via Marcin de Kaminski)
- Major record labels, government departments caught pirating files on BitTorrent
- Hollywood motion picture studios caught pirating games, movies, and television shows via BitTorrent
- Two new Pirate Bay proxies launch after UK Pirate Party forced to discontinue their own
