It's no secret that The Pirate Bay is by far the largest independent file-sharing community. With over 20 million peers, there is no other network that comes close to sharing its size. Remember when communities like LimeWire, eDonkey2000, WinMX and Kazaa were considered big with their 3-4 million users? Today, that's less than a quarter the size of The Pirate Bay.

There's probably an equal amount of good news and bad news to go along with The Pirate Bay's massive size. The Pirate Bay hasn't had an easy march to 20 million users, as its history has been a constant battle with the entertainment industry. Comparatively, today's legal problems the tracker faces seems rather slight compared to May of 2006, when it was temporarily pushed offline by the same people they're fighting today.

Considering the history of the file-sharing world, it's hard not to imagine what today's world would look like if The Pirate Bay was shut down permanently in 2006. Would someone else have stepped to the plate? Would BitTorrent be as important of a protocol as it is today?

Not many file-sharing entities are willing to exhibit a similar personality as The Pirate Bay - it's just too risky for most jurisdictions. And it's probably too risky in Sweden also, but that won't be known for certain until the criminal copyright infringement trial is finished. The stakes are rather high - the administrators could face a hefty fine or prison time. Whether the network can be taken offline is another matter. The Pirate Bay's network is much more globally dispersed than it was in 2006, and ordering a shutdown is much more easily said than done.

But for better or worse, the majority of file-sharers are on The Pirate Bay. History has a funny way of repeating itself; Napster, SuprNova, ShareReactor all fell despite their seemingly invulnerable nature. Will it happen to The Pirate Bay? And if it does, where will those 20 million users go?

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BitTorrent :: Trackers/Indexers

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