The Pirate Bay's Founding Organization Shuts Down

kcurtis sent the news that Piratbryån, the lobbying organization out of which The Pirate Bay sprang, has disbanded. (The torrent tracker is alive and well.) "Piratbyrån had many purposes, but could be described as a pro-piracy lobbying organization. It was founded in response to Antipiratbyrån, the local anti-piracy outfit in Sweden. The goal was to start a debate on copyright issues and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything Antipiratbyrån said for granted. Internationally, Piratbyrån is mostly known for launching The Pirate Bay in the fall of 2003, just a few months after the group itself was founded. ... The final decision to disband the group came after Ibi Kopimi Botani, a prominent member and co-founder of the group, passed away. Without one of its greatest minds, the group would never be the same again, Piratbyrån's members felt."

Pirate Party Still Alive

[RobinEggs]

It's not like this is the end; the Pirate Party still has seats in the European Parliament. If they thought letting this particular organization die made the most sense in absence of some central figures, then I'm not sure I agree but it's not the end of their political movement and it damn sure won't be the end of their member's activity in similar organizations.

Nobody sold out, nobody quit; the majority of their membership will hopefully move on to different groups with the same goals.

Re:it's a sad day for pirates everywhere

[morgan_greywolf]

Um, what destruction of TPB? Still works for me.

Re:Pirate Party Still Alive

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pirate Party and Piratbyrån are unrelated organizations.

Re:Pirate Party Still Alive

[nawitus]

The global pirate movement is only starting to gather momentum. This particular organization hasn't been very important for a few years now. For example, the Pirate Party of Finland has good chances to elect a member to the parliament in the elections next year.

Re:it's a sad day for pirates everywhere

[Arancaytar]

Piratbyran is not the Pirate Bay; they just founded it. Ever since 2004 their only connection was being hosted on the same servers, and that only until they moved.

Long story short; TPB is alive and well and living in... well, wherever the hell their servers are this week.

Ibrahim Botani

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The man's real name was Ibrahim Botani - the pseudonym "Kopimi" was adopted because many pirates refer to themselves as kopimists - "kopi mi" --> "copy me."

Here's a somewhat autobiographical post in his blog. [blogspot.com] Unfortunately for most of slashdot's readership, it's not written in english.

Re:Ibrahim Botani

[Husgaard]

There has not been much happening in Piratbyrån for the last few years anyway.

Many of the active people from Piratbyrån have become active in The Pirate Party [piratpartiet.se] or other clusters like Werebuild [werebuild.eu], The Julia Group [juliagruppen.se] or Telecomix [telecomix.org]. (The Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau [telecomix.org] held the conference recently discussed here [slashdot.org] where security flaws in some VPN tools used for filesharer anonymity were exposed.)

My guess it that the core people in Piratbyrån felt that this cluster was no longer needed and used the death of their friend as an excuse to shut it down, as a post-mortem honour to him.

Re:Hmm..

[Yvanhoe]

The group founded the Pirate Bay who is alive and well and had good ties with the pirate party which, with 9% of ballots in Sweden, is alive and well. The original group was slowly becoming obsolete in the best way possible. The death of the founding member just made that more evident. Closing the group is more a way to show respect and to not cling on the past than a failure.

Re:Hmm..

[Kjella]

The group founded the Pirate Bay who is alive and well and had good ties with the pirate party which, with 9% of ballots in Sweden, is alive and well.

The Pirate Party got 7.13% in the EU election, but they've been struggling to get visibility in polls in the run for the national election in September with 1-2% support when mentioned. The minimum limit is 4%, so they're okayish but it's a long way to go to become an established political party in parliament. In general many support their politics but they have taken a neutral stance outside their core politics to remain united so many end up voting left/right instead.

That said, they're not that far off as it sounds. While in the US there is problems with third parties with how the system works, it's a little bit like that with the 4% limit too as below that you get no representation and a lot of people won't vote for a party that "doesn't matter". If they start making people think they actually can make it and have a positive upswing in the polls they can get a positive feedback loop going and climb rapidly.

Polls aside, they are doing grassroot activity and they do have a good recruitment among young voters so they're alive and healthy that way. But gaining new voters by aging is a slow process, only something like 1/70th of the voters are replaced each year. But if all else fails, that bears promise for 2014...

Re:In Memoriam eh?

[X0563511]

Er, no. One of the founders died and the remainders thought that it just wasn't the same.

Try reading.