I'm really saddened by the news about PirateBay. It's kinda hurt me deep down. And then, the comments people had that demeaned PirateBay, something(come on, admit it) we all had found a very powerful tool some time ago.<p>Over and above that, Peter Sundes post on Mashable was very (oddly) defensive. And then the project Oldpiratebay...<p>I have been hit deep down, and this wound won't fill soon enough.
If you were rooting for the criminals there's no reason to feel sad for them. The founders got away with a nearly perfect crime - they declared an unknown group of people owned the site, kept all the money they made, and did very short prison sentences.<p>This is about the best possible outcome they could have had - they're free now and will probably never be held accountable again. Sunde even got to be "outraged" at how much money TPB made lol!
I don't know if I ever used PirateBay at all. I have downloaded a few torrents, but I don't know where I found them, beyond just "Google".<p>When I think about the websites that have had a direct personal impact on my life, I come up with things like E2, Wikipedia, Slashdot.<p>Maybe there's a PirateBay community. Maybe it was far better than all similar services. I don't know. The PirateBay shutdown is a political thing for me. Nothing more.
It's sort of sad to see such an old site go down, but it doesn't really change anything. It is a never ending battle for the people who took it down.<p>TPB goes down, many come up in its place. Majority of the known posters on tpb post on other sites already, so it isn't hard to find a replacement.