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Pirate Bay Archive Goes Online
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With the main Pirate Bay website experiencing DNS issues, downtime and uncertainty about both the lawsuits and potential sale to GGF, a Pirate Bay clone has already gone online. True to their principles, someone at TPB put up a torrent with a 21.3 GB copy of the site as it exists today. And now that archive is alive, at BTArena.net. Linus' old adage about backing up everything by putting it on FTP and letting the world mirror it may need to be updated. Torrents are much more efficient." "Downtime" may be a nice word for it; reader Underholdning writes "The Register has a story about a Swedish court ordering ISPs to disconnect The Pirate Bay or face a massive daily fine. The reason for the shutdown was an upcoming civil lawsuit by copyright holders. As usual, Torrentfreak has an updated story. It seems like the takedown until now has been successful." Believe what you will; the site itself says they'll be back up "in a few hours."
The site is currently up, with one of their trademark images, this time of a T-shirt with the following on it:
I spent months of time and millions of dollars to close down The Pirate Bay and all I'll get is this beautiful T-shirt!
Please never die, TPB, if only for your front page images.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
When are they going to realize you can't shut them down. Too many people use their site and will mirror it if necessary. Pretty soon the word torrent will be illegal on the internet.
This summary begs the question... Could you revise the bit torrent spec to allow people to query an index of torrents via bittorrent?
I'm only half-kidding here...
Even if TPB gets the axe, there's a thousand other ways to get alternative music/videos/games...
TPB is NOT that important anymore.
A back-up is all OK, but the people behind TPB (well I suppose it's them, because they use the same servers as TPB) is working on a decentralized replacement for TPB called openbittorrent.com and torrage.com. This decentralized version will be almost impossible to take out both legally and technically, and according to the ideology behind TPB it will be more democratic.
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
If we take a look at the range of activities proscribed by the government, making no moral judgment here, just talking about stuff they don't want you to do, you'll never get rid of it. Take drugs. Some will say that the US is too permissive a society, that we can only get rid of them if we go totalitarian. You can't get more hardcore than Singapore, China, various Islamic countries with the death penalty for drug smuggling. Guess what? You can still get drugs there. China is doing their level best to suppress the Falun Gong and they're still around. The lions didn't do much to dissuade the Christians back in the early days. Ideas couldn't be suppressed when the only way to spread them was handwritten letters and walking tours. The printing press only made suppression more difficult and the internet is the printing press x100.
I suppose, in theory, one could impose filtering at the ISP level and stop the bulk of casual P2P traffic. But just think of what people did before the internet. Oh, that's right -- mix tapes for songs, file copy parties for software. There's just no way to stop it. If we still had Prohibition, that would be enough to stop me from drinking -- there's no way I'm going to risk so much for a shot of whiskey. But my lack of patronage wouldn't hurt the speakeasies a bit.
So, what would we see if total p2p filtering was successful? (which I still say it couldn't be.) Look at Cuba. Broadband costs too much there but flash drives are cheap. There's a thriving trade in flash drives, people copying and sharing away.
Ultimately, I think that the only viable solution will be a patronage system. The content will be given away for free and a tip jar will be set out for fans to contribute to. No, the vast majority of the people who watch the show won't be paying for it but if enough do so it can remain on the air, what's the problem? I'm sure the transition from our current media model will be a painful process but we're already seeing success in some areas.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
ha spot the irony!
Apparently it's hosted in Romania and the local RIAA already tried to take it down.
.sig: No such file or directory
In its day, Suprnova was THE torrent site. Its shutdown lead to the rise of PB, mininova and many others.
What will the shutdown of PB lead to? It is a giant game of wack a mole.
I will miss PB mainly for their snarky attitude posting the threat letters they get and responding to them in almost Monty Python fashion.
What's the use of a mirror of the torrent files if nobody else has the infrastructure to maintain the tracker? Even before this legal storm TPB has been having trouble dealing with the load on their servers.
Plus most of the torrents point to the PB tracker, which is unreachable at this point.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
There is no irony. Trademarks are not intellectual property - their purpose is to prevent people from impersonating you and harming your brand image, copyrights and patents prevent people from copying your work/invention and unfairly competing against you by selling it without having to pay development costs.
We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the /. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf's's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Torrent files are very small. They only point to the data, they don't contain it.
I herd you like torrents, so I put a torrent in your torrent so you can leech while you leech...
sudo apt-get install -t unstable piratebay
it's important as a symbol for people that download and don't give a shit what the law says. it's also a great way to divert attention and resources away from prosecuting other torrent sites by making tpb public enemy number 1. who cares if half the peers are hacking and the warez contains trojans; at least that's lawyer money that they can't throw at someone else. it keeps bittorrent, IP rights, and issues of net neutrality and surveillance in the public debate.
TPB works in several positive, intangible ways, and is important as a lawyer/enforcement magnet so other sites can stay under the radar that much longer. every day TPB is up and running, i think everyone that isn't an **AA crony can smile a bit inside.