Or, at least, they don’t stop their bit torrent search to take part in on-site surveys, which leads to one of the major problems when dealing with statistics from a survey, bias, of course. The fact that these surveys are normally voluntary-response based means that, although Pirate Bay got over 75,000 responses, PB visitors could easily overlook or ignore the survey prompt, which skews the findings.

But then again, considering the response rate was substantial, it could also mean that girls don’t pirate, and if they do, they don’t use Pirate Bay to do so.

The details about the Pirate Bay’s survey comes from TorrentFreak.com, and according to their article, Pirate Bay partnered with the Cybernorms research group, which bases its operations at the Lund University in Sweden. The goal survey, even with its built-in potential for bias, was to “conduct the largest survey among file-sharers.” Apparently, the results won’t be available until November, but there has been some data released, and these findings are about what you’d expect.

Pirates (or file-sharers, depending on which side of the fence you sit) want movies and instead of ceasing these actions, they would rather find more anonymous ways of downloading. This, quite honestly, should not come as a surprise. Even the data about female downloaders, five percent, according to the responses, isn’t considered shocking, but then again, maybe females don’t want to answer questions about their file-sharing habits, either.

And therein lies the rub with voluntary response surveys. It’s more likely that there are less female pirates than there are males, but the nature of the survey also lends itself to the idea that maybe these same women are just more private about their activities, anonymous surveys or not.

Then again, it could be a case of the “men do it like this, women do it like this,” with males downloading and females spending their time on Twitter and Facebook.

Another area of note is the idea that despite the incredible corporate backlash, file-sharers/pirates/downloaders/thieves/rebels–call them what you will–have no intention of slowing down. From TorrentFreak’s post:

According to the researchers it wont be easy to stop people from sharing files. Aside from seeking more ways to download torrents anonymously, the respondents are also increasingly seeking alternative sharing options, such as swapping USB-sticks and sharing files directly with friends via mobile phones.

Which means, at least in the United States where ISPs and entertainment content producers are close bedfellows, the legislative efforts of trying to turn the Internet into a cable TV package will continue unabated as well.

Let’s start with the more official of two documents.  The International Chamber of Commerce has put something together based on incidents described to the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre.  This Live Piracy Map 2008 makes the sea look like a pretty scary place, especially around much of Africa and southern parts of Asia.

Then, to switch sources and become much more specific, we can move to what a member of the Google Earth Community who goes by the screen name "expedition" created.   His map focuses on the coast of Somalia, and is detailed almost beyond belief.

 Pirate Attacks Around Somalia

"See the building compounds where pirates and warlords cache arms, plan their attacks, obtain ransom, and communicate with the ships they seize offshore," writes expedition.  "View the actual pirate bases, vehicles, checkpoints, and pirate boats.  Locate the precise areas of the sea where vessels are hijacked, and where the pirates drop anchor to hold their crews for ransom.  Find secret airstrips where pirate crews get their daily fix of addictive khat leaf stimulant flown in.  View the places where commandos have captured pirates fleeing or targeted their land-based resources."

We can’t vouch for expedition’s "extensive independent research," of course, and the anti-pirate actions of several navies may soon throw his map out of kilter, anyway.  But regardless, these documents are fascinating, and a hat tip goes to Frank Taylor and the Google Earth Blog.