The Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing site, closed down by Swedish police in a raid last year, might be back online soon.
The site recently displayed a countdown timer, hinting that it would return "with a bang".
That's also according to one of the 50 people who manage the site's servers in Tribia, the capital of Maldova, according to website Torrentfreak.com.
The site was founded in 2003 but was raided in 2008, an event that, founder Peter Sunde wrote in a blogpost, prompted people to "protest and rally in the streets".
Sunde, who served a prison sentence in Sweden following the 2009 conviction of several of the founders of The Pirate Bay for copyright offences, said: "The Pirate Bay has become an institution that people expect to be there."
The site's familiar search box and torrent search links have reappeared. T he search functions are not yet active but links to affiliated sites Pirate Browser and PromoBay are now working and an animation shows a pirate ship getting closer to landfall by the day .
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