AfterDawn: News

The Pirate Bay hits new milestone

The infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has hit a new milestone, reaching 20 million unique peers. It has been estimated that the site tracks over 50 percent of all BitTorrent users that are on at any point.

In 2006 the site tracked 3 million peers which moved up to 6 million peers by November 2007. In April of this year, TPB admin and founder Brokep noted that they had hit 12 million peers. The growth has been exponential and does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon.



Admin Peter Sunde added that there was previously limits on how many peers the site could track but those have been lifted thanks to new changes. “I wish we had lots and lots of money so we could just buy like 10 servers and another gigabit,” he jokingly added.

Sunde says he hopes to hit 24 million peers by Christmas Eve, and it seems they will get it.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 2 Nov 2008 22:39

• Previous article

• PS3 sales fall again in Japan

• Next article

• Using leaked NXE will disconnect you from Live until November 19th

• 12 comments

• fgamer

  Incredible, this makes them even more of a target. Whenever someones attracting 20million of anything somebody's not gonna like it.

  3.11.2008 05:56 #1

• tin23uk

  true but the backing of 20 million people cant be too bad either. through donations they could be as rich as the record companies and afford to employ the same dirty tactics as they do lol

  3.11.2008 10:14 #2

• ugc

  That was my first thought..."A bigger Target". But, they have been able to stay in business so far, and I figured that there was no way they would have lasted this long. Hail to TPB.

  3.11.2008 11:53 #3

• Azazel61

  I still think it creates a bigger target as well. I have faith in TPB though. I will continue to support them.

  3.11.2008 12:14 #4

• Azuran

  Originally posted by camaro17: TPB have been threatened many times and they never do as the company pleases, go look at the bottom of the site and it will say something like threats or some shit.
  
  Peacehttp://thepiratebay.org/legal

  3.11.2008 17:00 #5

• DXR88

  Yeah dude they cant be shut down they're running there servers in the Brig of the old Ironclad warship of there's.

  4.11.2008 21:09 #6

• Mez

  The media maffia has stopped going after them and the users etc. Now they are spending all their efforts into making P2P illegal with solid laws in their favor and having someone else doing the policing and enforcement. That is expensive but will put an end to it. Even the underground networks can be had. They have 3 countries in their pockets so they have more money to use somewhere else. If not, there are 3 countries that will never p2p anymore.

  5.11.2008 08:13 #7

• ShaggyZE

  well P2P will never be illegal because that would shut down all IM services as well so no one would be able to talk to each other, send an image or file from one person to another on the internet because that's all it is and as long as pirate bay's server hosts and ISP don't get pressured or pushed to shut them down then they will be up forever because they are not hosting any illegal files, and are not disobeying any Swedish laws; its the users uploading that's what needs to be stopped if ever possible because the bit torrent clients/network is already out there and with where the technology is heading with buddycast soon people won't even need the trackers.
  
  not to mention one of the first and biggest internet black markets like mIRC 1995-2008 with over 150 million downloads and is hardly ever looked at because there is no way of tracking it like bit torrent and other p2ps

  7.11.2008 08:27 #8

• Mez

  Well I haven't read the laws in Japan, NZ or France. I do remember reading about someone in Japan getting caught posting something on one of the invisable nets thought to be very secure within 24 hrs of the post. Maybe that was a fluke and it was dumb luck the guy was caught. I think not.
  
  I believe torrents and limewire types of P2P will be hunted hard if the laws get changed.
  
  mIRC may be a different story. Torrents are difficult enough to track. Once the 2 biggest P2P agents are squashed, anyone uploading only 100 g/mon will stick out like a sore thumb.
  
  I truely believe the ISPs are not all that interested in eliminating P2P as long as it does not interfear with their business. It is quite possiple they will turn a blind eye at even 100 g/mon uploading. Tracking you down will cost them for no benifit to them. Unless they are compelled to do so, that would be bad business. Even though they claim only 5% of their users abuse the web they know better. One of the most agressive ISPs on the planet, Comcast, sent out a soothing statement after comming down hard on P2P and setting bandwidth limits. Obviously, too many persons voted with their feet. They claimed they were thinking about increasing the 250 g/mon limit maybe next year and they had no thoughts of tightening restictions.

  7.11.2008 09:55 #9

• varnull

  There are lots of legal uses of p2p also. The BBC iPlayer uses p2p in a secretive way, and lots of open source programs and operating systems are distributed over p2p networks. The EFF have a paper on the matter. Blocking all p2p could lead to a large anti-trust case against the isp's and governments who try to force them into blocking perfectly legal applications and content in favour of commercial payware alternatives.
  In this Richard Stallman and the FSF come into play also. We are looking for a more open and less restrictive world. If your government and your isp do things you don't like then as long as you live in some approximation of a democracy (sadly can't be applied to a lot of Europe) you can make yourself heard with your wallet and your vote.
  
  The French government may well find itself on shaky ground.. like the UK government did.. over the "three strikes" guilt by accusation nonsense. It's not legal.. unless it is proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law.. so you can't just have your internet pulled on the say so of the MPAA or whatever. (habeus corpus.. no punishment without proof of guilt)
  
  We beat them down with legal arguments in the UK.. the same will work in France if enough people get determined to stand up for liberty and freedom.
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana..

  7.11.2008 10:11 #10

• Mez

  I worked hard here this summer making my views known to our officials. but they may vote again after elections if they can find the votes. Otherwise it has been put off for another 2 years. Lame duck lawmakers have nothing to lose.
  
  You may also be correct in the legality of the laws. I am sure Sony land is screwed but maybe not the other countries. I would not be surprised if they couldn't monitor what torrents you down loaded. I am sure the IPSs could do a proper job if they wanted to. If they feel it is bad for business they might bungle the work and allow the red tape kill the process.

  7.11.2008 17:33 #11

• rlessmue

  
  
  Cheers!

  7.11.2008 20:17 #12