The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated to TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software, founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, where visitors can search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.

BitTorrent is a communications protocol of peer-to-peer file sharing ("P2P") which is used to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet.

BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, such as digital video files containing TV shows or video clips or digital audio files containing songs.

Peer-to-peer networks have been estimated to collectively account for approximately 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic (depending on location).

In November 2004, BitTorrent was responsible for 25% of all Internet traffic.

As of February 2013, BitTorrent was responsible for 3.35% of all worldwide bandwidth, more than half of the 6% of total bandwidth dedicated to file sharing.

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers.

A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server and the proxy server evaluates the request as a way to simplify and control its complexity.

Proxies were invented to add structure and encapsulation to distributed systems.

Today, most proxies are web proxies, facilitating access to content on the World Wide Web, providing anonymity and may be used to bypass IP address blocking.

In computer networks, to download is to receive data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar systems.

This contrasts with uploading, where data is sent to a remote server.

A computer file is a computer resource for recording data discretely in a computer storage device.

Just as words can be written to paper, so can information be written to a computer file.