''TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard'' is a 2013 Swedish
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
directed and produced by
. It focuses on the lives of the three founders of
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
–
Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (born 13 September 1978), alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. Sunde is of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent s ...
,
Fredrik Neij
Hans Fredrik Lennart Neij (born 27 April 1978), alias TiAMO, is the co-founder of The Pirate Bay, and the Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company PRQ. Neij was one of the defendants in The Pirate Bay Trial which began on 16 Feb ...
, and
Gottfrid Svartholm
Per Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (born 17 October 1984), alias anakata, is a Swedish computer specialist, known as the former co-owner of the web hosting company PRQ and co-founder of the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay together with Fredrik Neij and ...
– and the
Pirate Bay trial
The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay. The criminal charges were supported by a ...
. Filming began sometime in 2008, and concluded on 28 February 2012.
Production
The film's website was launched on 28 August 2010, along with a
Kickstarter campaign to raise
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
25,000 to hire an editor after the Court of Appeal
trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal ...
. The campaign was fully funded within three days and raised $51,424 in total. In February 2011, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee ( sv, Konstnärsnämnden) granted the project an additional 200,000 SEK (≈$30,000).
Release
The full film was released under the
Creative Commonsbr>
BY-NC-NDlicense onto The Pirate Bay,
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
, and other
BitTorrent sites. Additionally, a four-minute shorter version with certain copyright restricted content removed was released at the same time under the Creative Common
BY-NC-SAlicense to allow
remixing
A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
.
TPB AFK premiered at the
63rd Berlin International Film Festival
The 63rd annual Berlin International Film Festival took place in Berlin, Germany between 7 and 17 February 2013. Chinese film director Wong Kar-wai was announced as the President of the Jury and his film '' The Grandmaster'' was the opening fil ...
on 8 February 2013 – opening the festival's 'Panorama Dokumente' section – coinciding with its free online release on YouTube and The Pirate Bay.
On 19 February 2013, the film was broadcast on
BBC Four in the UK as part of the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, one of the subjects of the documentary, wrote that he has "mixed feelings about the movie and the release of it". Whilst he likes the technical side of the documentary, he has issues with some scenes and general attitude of the documentary; this includes too much focus put on the trial, too dark depiction of it, and portraying himself beyond self-recognition. Despite having such different views on the subject, he regards the director as a friend.
links pointing to the documentary, an action criticized by Simon Klose. In June, after the initial controversy,
takedown notices to Google requesting the removal of links related to TPB AFK. In response, Simon Klose contacted
, who recommended him to file a DMCA counter-notice once he had found out whether Google had taken down the links or not. Two months later, the censored links were reinstated only after public complaints made by Klose.