1. TPB is not down, it is and has been up-just really really slow. TPB being slow is nothing new, it's been plagued with speed and reliability problems the entire summer.
2. TPB trackers were shut down a long time ago willfully. They still show up all over the place though because nobodys really around anymore to maintain the website except a couple volunteer moderators with limited access. Most torrents that were tracked on TPB's tracker are now tracked on openbt/publicbt. It's common practice for people to point dns of tracker.thepiratebay.org to tracker.openbittorrent.com.
3. Swedish news outlets have already confirmed WikiLeaks was not the target of these raids. It's just a coincidence that them and many other controversial websites are hosted at prq/rix-mainly because of their dedication to anonymity of the customer.
4. Their goal (my guess/opinion) was to take down a bunch of "scene" servers and websites simultaneously to temporarily stem the flow of high quality releases. Release groups and Pre sites/Scene sites often use servers to coordinate their efforts and post their releases to these places first-After which you have a trickle down effect where the torrents are posted to public torrent sites most of us are familiar with. I guess they're hoping that there will be enough evidence on these computers to identify some of the individuals who are at the top of the "scene" foodchain-the people who actually sneak the camcorders into the theaters or work at the cd pressing factory to prerelease a new CD etc...
