The long-awaited Pirate Bay TV series premiered in Sweden on Friday, through official channel and (eventually also) on The Pirate Bay.
There’s no doubt that the notorious torrent site has made history, but getting everything down on paper and converting it into a TV-series is no easy task.
TorrentFreak has seen the first two episodes. While reviews are not our thing, we requested input from two founding figures, both of whom were featured in the show. This made clear that there is plenty to say.
Fiction
Let’s begin by stressing that The Pirate Bay series is a work of fiction, inspired by facts. The story of the remarkably deviant and resilient torrent site is well known. Never before, however, has it been told this way; by the entertainment industry.
Documenting a historical movement on screen blurs the lines between fact and fiction. It can be tricky to distinguish what really happened from the embellishments introduced under creative license. That’s also the case here.
Viewers shouldn’t confuse the series with reality. It is mostly a collection of scenes that never took place; at least not as portrayed. It’s the interpretation of the writers and directors, based on public information and details shared by insiders.
The three lead characters, Pirate Bay founders Fredrik, Gottfrid, and Peter, were not involved in the project. This means that important context and details are missing. You can’t really blame the creators for this, but it’s important to keep in mind.
Never Happened…
Based on the first episodes, the series presents an entertaining version of The Pirate Bay’s origin story. There is plenty of attention for historical details and some props were meticulously recreated, including the legendary Pirate Bay bus.
The broader storyline, ultimately ending with the founders’ prison sentences, is well documented too. The creators don’t deviate much there. That said, many scenes, timelines, and events portrayed on TV never took place.
For example, there’s a key opening scene where the tracker is officially launched by Piratbyrån’s Rasmus Fleischer at a house party. The event was videotaped and sent to the Swedish anti-piracy bureau, Antipiratbyrån. While the scene is entertaining, it never happened.
The same applies to other details. For example, the suggestion that the Pirate Bay’s key figures were hard to find is overblown. There was a publicly posted bank account tied to the donations, for example, and Pirate Bay’s hosting company PRQ was owned by two of the site’s founders.
These details are largely irrelevant to the broader public. Overall, they provide a good overview of the site’s origins and the main story arc, leaving room for viewers to draw their own conclusions.
For those at the heart of the events, the series is a different story altogether. They see ‘copies’ of themselves playing roles they don’t necessarily identify with. After everything they went through, that can feel like a slap in the face; from the entertainment industry.
Peter Sunde: Disappointed
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, aka Brokep, doesn’t recognize himself in the series. Peter skipped the official advance screener in Stockholm that was organized for key figures but found an unofficial option to watch it before it aired. He wasn’t impressed.
“To be honest, I’m very disappointed. Sure it’s fictional, but what does that really mean when they use your name, quote you on things you’ve said, and then portray you completely different?” he tells us.
For example, Peter’s character is initially portrayed as somewhat submissive to his boss at Siemens, which he doesn’t recognize at all. In addition, the series doesn’t fully grasp the disorganized nature of Piratbyrån either, he says.
What stings the most is that the ‘entertainment industry’ that’s long been The Pirate Bay’s main arch rival, is now commercializing its history.
“My biggest concern with the series is that it’s made by people from the same industry that hates The Pirate Bay,” Peter says. “It’s paid for by organizations that have sued or threatened to sue TPB.”
Peter doesn’t recognize himself or the other founders in the series, not in attitude or wit. To top it off, ‘his’ Norwegian accent is “awful” too, he says, suggesting that this may have been done on purpose.
Peter declined to cooperate with B-Reel Films, the Swedish production company that created the series. While he stands by that decision, he had hoped that the episodes would place more emphasis on the broader impact of the site, instead of the legal drama.
“Honestly, I feel it’s like they put the TPB Wikipedia articles and TPB AFK into an LLM and asked the AI to make a script,” Peter concludes.
Rasmus Fleischer: Copying History
Rasmus Fleischer, one of the founders of Piratbyrån who was closely involved in the Pirate Bay project in the early days, shares some of Peter’s criticism. However, he is more forgiving towards the creators.
“One thing I do not recognize in the fictionalized ‘Rasmus Fleischer’ is that he seems unable to open his mouth without going into a principled speech about freedom of speech and the like.
“While I do and did prefer freedom to unfreedom, Piratbyrån definitely did not talk much in the language of rights and freedoms,” Rasmus adds.
Rasmus chooses not to go into great detail on everything that he believes misses the mark, but he stresses that it was never the goal to piss off Hollywood and its lawyers. He sees it more as an impromptu trolling machine. To him, it almost seemed fictional at the time.
“At times, everything already had a quite fictional character. Or so it felt, watching how our own made-up fictions made headlines around the world,” he says, mentioning the “buy Sealand” project as an example.
Rasmus has a Ph.D. in history and works at Stockholm University, so he has some experience with how history is told. He recognizes that there’s no uniform history here. To create something understandable, one has to pick a scenario.
“To tell the story of The Pirate Bay, based on true events, necessarily means to discard the vast majority of events. Trying to fit it all in would result in a chaotic, non-linear story, hardly understandable for anyone who wasn’t around.”
In the series, the creators focused on the legal aspects, instead of the broader societal impact. This is “a bit boring” according to Rasmus. However, he’s not upset or offended by the end result.
“I am not offended by the fact that it is ‘the entertainment industry’ telling the story, and I also don’t feel that I have any right to control fictional accounts even if it includes a character bearing my name.
“I still like copying. Just let them copy me, let them show what kind of copies they are able to make – and we will show them once again how we copy,” Rasmus adds.
Piratbyrån vs. The Pirate Bay
If anything, the above shows that, after all these years, The Pirate Bay story still moves people. And indeed, the series is food for thought.
Piratbyrån was simply a disorganized group of friends who discovered that they could have a broad impact by destabilizing institutions and rethinking the status quo. These ideas didn’t start at organized meetings, most communication took place on IRC.
In 2003, their focus on file-sharing caught on, and The Pirate Bay was ‘just another’ display of defiance. However, the Pirate Bay quickly grew into something much larger than Piratbyrån.
Ultimately, Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter silently accepted the ‘founder’ labels. They came together at the right time, with each assuming their own role, for different reasons. They all excelled in these positions and helped The Pirate Bay thrive.
Where other core Piratbyrån members stayed at the sidelines, the trio assumed roles that define their lives up until this day. For other Piratbyrån members, meanwhile, the site is simply a remnant of a somewhat rebellious period of their lives.
Today, the Pirate Bay has served its original purpose, but the site keeps running. The founders cut their ties over the years, but someone is still pulling the strings.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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