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Thepiratebay is not putting up any files on thepiratebay.org, the users are

Knowingly and willingly facilitating crime is usually a crime in itself. As a clear example, if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you didn't do the killing, but you facilitated the crime.

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Yes, but if you pay a hitman to kill someone, you don't blame the phone company for which you used to contact the hitman.

You might if the phone company not only knew about it, but marketed itself on its willingness to look the other way when callers used its network for illegal activity, and encouraged the idea of using its network for hits-for-hire to the degree that it called itself "Assassins' Telephone and Telegraph" and made a logo of a crosshairs for its website.

Cassettes were used to copy music in the past, are you saying that cassette manufacturers were committing a crime?

Not really, because one can easily argue that cassettes have "substantial non-infringing use". It's a little harder to argue for that in the case of TPB.

Some people "copied" while others "backed up".

I only used them as storage for my ZX Spectrum !

If they willingly put them out there with the intent to facilitate crime, yes.

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