When The Pirate Bay 'hijacked' North Korea's web traffic and other anecdotes revealed by one of its founders

[Chewy_fox]

When TPB wanted to convince us that they had taken refuge in North Korea

"We can make public that we have been invited by the leader of the Republic of [North] Korea to fight our battles from his network ." Almost 8 years ago, The Pirate Bay surprised with this announcement , a few days after being forced to leave the server of the Swedish Pirate Party that hosted them.

For a few days, we were all convinced that the web had taken refuge in North Korea ...

The news was shocking at the time, due to the abysmal differences between TPB and the Pyongyang regime regarding Internet freedom ... but the web traffic seemed to really come from the Asian country . Then it emerged, of course, that it had all been a great joke.

Now, Sunde has recounted what really happened:

"Did you know that TPB once hijacked the Internet in North Korea? Someone managed to find a faulty router configuration that made it possible for us to pretend to be North Korea [...] To make it look real, even the traffic was reduced to make it look like a satellite connection.

"It took days before people realized it, it was quite fun. Unfortunately, that caused people in North Korea to have trouble connecting. But I think their sacrifice was worth it."

IN GENBETA

The Pirate Bay is back on its original domain

When TPB wanted to buy a country

According to Sunde, TPB also carried out what "perhaps" was one of "the first crowdfunding campaigns" , although it emphasizes that its objective at that time was not to hire servers ... but to buy a country .

The famous maritime enclave of Sealand was chosen by those responsible for the download website: "I remember how much I laughed when they invited the Prince of Sealand to Larry King for that."

The curious thing about that episode is that it caused, as Sunde explains, that "a very strange American uncle" got in touch with him:

"He wanted our help to build the Internet in a corrupt African nation. He wanted his own infrastructure. A forward-thinking friend. [Although] We never built that 'African Internet'."

Cakes and polar bears

Another of the 'stories' related by Sunde is that of a company that for a time was dedicated to uploading fake films to TPB on the pay of film companies to sue those who downloaded them:

"We were able (we cannot disclose how) to obtain copies of all their emails, including which IP addresses they had used, so that we could block them."

"I called them once and explained the irony of them basing their business on breaking our terms of use , which is illegal. During the call, their secretary sent an email that someone saying they had a birthday at the office and had cake I ended the call by saying "don't forget to get a cake!"

Shortly thereafter, "someone" leaked several internal messages from that company, including a phone call between them and the New York district attorney, bragging about their security skills ... ".

Sunde also recalls his habit of responding with a photo of a polar bear to legal threats:

"If they asked us why, we explained that it was a real threat for us to walk our streets, and that copyright is not important in comparison."

Which really scared the creators of The Pirate Bay.

"The Internet is real life too"

The following anecdote of The Pirate Bay recalled by Sunde was also another campaign, this time successful, of crowdfunding: the financing of the documentary 'TPB AFK' (the acronym in English of 'The Pirate Bay away from the keyboard').

'TPB AFK' is a Creative Commons documentary film that began shooting shortly after the legal proceedings against the tracker began in 2008, and was released 5 years later.

But why the 'AFK' thing? Sunde explains that they were upset that the prosecutor in the case used the expression 'IRL' ("in real life") at one point to refer to things other than the Internet, "because the Internet is also real life."

How do the co-founders of The Pirate Bay get along?

But our protagonist has also taken advantage of his thread on Twitter to touch on some aspects of the intrahistory of TPB, especially his (bad) relationship with other co-founders :

"A lot of people ask me if I keep in touch with Gottfrid or Fredrik. Well, we could never get along. We have extremely different political views and it has become more polarized over the years. Gottfrid explained it well: we shouldn't be together in The same room".

"TPB worked simply because we agreed on some basic concepts: a free Internet, not controlled by corporations; high technology with low / no budget (it brings out the best in technologists). But most of all we enjoy telling the privileged to go to school. shit".

IN GENBETA

Peter Sunde, founder of Pirate Bay: "Mark Zuckerberg is the greatest dictator on the planet"

"In the end I left TPB because I spent 8 hours a day in it. [...] We had decided from the beginning that we would close it on the 10th birthday no matter what else because things need to burn to make room for new things. They didn't. And now look at the porn ads, God. "

Sunde, the (unclassifiable) political candidate

Peter Sunde is also known as an activist for the Swedish Pirate Party. Not only was he a candidate for the European Parliament, but the pirate parties of the EU came to elect him as a co-candidate (absolutely symbolic) for the Presidency of the European Commission) :

"I was on the Interpol wanted list and my campaign [motto] was: 'Vote for me to get diplomatic immunity.'

It was then that he released "a very strange campaign video"; warns whoever sees it that they will understand "if you stop following" on Twitter. In his defense, he alleges that he had a 40º fever when he filmed it :

Edited May 21, 2021 by Chewy_fox

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