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The Pirate Bay Takes Over Anti-Piracy Domain

Posted by kdawson on from the heads-will-roll dept.

palpatin writes to let us know that The Pirate Bay has now taken up residence at IFPI.com, a domain once owned by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The Pirate Bay says the site will now promote the International Federation of Pirates Interests. IFPI can still be reached at ifpi.org. Torrentfreak has up a brief interview with Brokep, one of the administrators of The Pirate Bay, who says: "It's not a hack, someone just gave us the domain name. We have no idea how they got it, but it's ours and we're keeping it."

6 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Ill gotten gain? by SunTzuWarmaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does anyone else have a problem with the justification of:
    "yes, this shipment of cigarettes just arrived at our doorstep, we figured we'd keep 'em".

  2. Pity they announced it by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Pirate Bay could have been rather more subtle about it:
    1. copy the content of IFPI.org
    2. change the content, subtly at first
    3. publish ever more outrageous claims
    4. wait for people to realize the site isn't owned by the IFPI.

    1. Re:Pity they announced it by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right, because then they wouldn't have breached about a thousand copyright laws in the process and REALLY put themselves in the legal spotlight?

  3. Where's the theft? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A domain was registered. This domain was transfered to TPB. Where is the theft?

    Who said that IFPI.com was ever owned by the IFPI?
    Who said that they still own it, provided they ever did?

    You have to register domains to have them. Having "your" domain isn't some sort of human right or part of your intrinsic rights when filing for corporation. Just because those four letters are some sort of acronym for your company/organisation/whatever doesn't mean you have all rights to those four letters and nobody else may ever create anything that could use that acronym and (god forbid) even register a domain name that consists of those four letters. There are actually only 26^4 ways to create four letter acronyms, and some (like ANAL or FUCK) ain't really useful. At least to most businesses.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Where's the theft? by McDutchie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Who said that IFPI.com was ever owned by the IFPI?

      archive.org does: http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.ifpi.com

      Looks like the IFPI site was there from March 30, 2003 at the latest until October 19, 2006 at the earliest. Between that time and February 2, 2007 someone appears to have snagged it (legally or not, I have no idea). Then it briefly became a blog. I guess the blogger then gave it to TPB.

  4. Re:It looks like it expired, not stolen by imadork · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Furthermore, if this is the way the domain was obtained, it may make it harder for the IFPI folks to take back. Since the domain was at one time legally owned by them, and then abandoned, the domain name arbitrator could rule that they relinquished any claim to the name when they abandoned it. After all, if they really wanted the domain name, wouldn't they have renewed it?