The Pirate Bay quietly turned 18 this year. The site survived several shutdown attempts and remains online. Nonetheless, one of the lawyers who fought The Pirate Bay in court says that the lawsuits and raids were worth it. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde disagrees and believes that the torrent site can’t be stopped by rightsholders.

This year, The Pirate Bay officially reached adulthood, which is quite an achievement considering the immense legal pressure it has faced over the years.

The site was launched in 2003 under the wings of the now-disbanded pro-culture organization “Piratbyrån”, which is Swedish for Bureau of Piracy.

The group was formed by political activists and hackers in the same year. By then, many of the members had already launched other web projects challenging political, moral, and power structures. The Pirate Bay fitted this category and became a synonym for file-sharing in the following years.

The site remains online today but it’s not without scars. Swedish police tried to shut the site down twice, raiding dozens of servers. This ultimate goal failed but local authorities did prosecute the site’s three co-founders, who all served time in prison for their involvement.

This week the Swedish news site M3 ran a piece on TPB, bringing together some key players from the Pirate Bay trial. On one side there’s entertainment industry lawyer Monique Wadsted, who represented Hollywood, and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde chimed in as well.