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The Raid-Proof Hosting Technology Behind 'The Pirate Bay'
HughPickens.com writes Ernesto reports at TorrentFreak that despite its massive presence the Pirate Bay doesn't have a giant server park but operates from the cloud, on virtual machines that can be quickly moved if needed. The site uses 21 "virtual machines" (VMs) hosted at different providers, up four machines from two years ago, in part due to the steady increase in traffic. Eight of the VMs are used for serving the web pages, searches take up another six machines, and the site's database currently runs on two VMs. The remaining five virtual machines are used for load balancing, statistics, the proxy site on port 80, torrent storage and for the controller. In total the VMs use 182 GB of RAM and 94 CPU cores. The total storage capacity is 620 GB. One interesting aspect of The Pirate Bay is that all virtual machines are hosted with commercial cloud hosting providers, who have no clue that The Pirate Bay is among their customers. "Moving to the cloud lets TPB move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don't even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent." All traffic goes through the load balancer, which masks what the other VMs are doing. This also means that none of the IP-addresses of the cloud hosting providers are publicly linked to TPB. For now, the most vulnerable spot appears to be the site's domain. Just last year TPB burnt through five separate domain names due to takedown threats from registrars. But then again, this doesn't appear to be much of a concern for TPB as the operators have dozens of alternative domain names standing by.
Both. You can make money and have the lulz...
Their traffic is up that much?!
I imagine it has a lot to do with more and more countries coming online with broadband in recent years--countries where people often don't have any legal options to purchase movies, or the money to purchase them even if they did.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Some people out there have motivations other than "money" and "lulz".
Things like "respect of one's peers", "ideology", "non-conformism" or even "the challenge of doing something hard no one else can do", can make some people take quite large risks.
Yeah, but who would want to advertise on a site frequented almost exclusively by cheapskates who would rather steal content than pay for it? Even if they found your ad compelling, they're way more likely to steal your product than buy it.
That's perhaps part of it, but the main reason is that TPB is still the best place to get new stuff. I always download all new TV-series there, except netflix-series that I can get on... netflix.
As for games, I recently wanted to buy a few games on stream, but they demanded a copy of my id because my card was issued in another country than the one I live in at the moment. Fine, goodbye. Downloaded the games at TPB instead.
It should not only be possible but also convenient to buy media. Netflix and GOG are great and get my money, other places that are less great and makes it difficult can keep their digital copies while I go browsing at the Pirate Bay.
Copying, downloading or illegally streaming, none of those constitute stealing. Nice try though.
Oh, and by the way, those cheapskates? Yeah not so much. Turns out there are a number of different reasons people resort to piracy to get what they want. Unsurprisingly, price really has very little to do with it. I'd link a bunch of articles for your dumb ass to read, but, yeah what's the point?
went legit half a decade ago?
According to many people, they have always been just as legit as Google or Bing.
They just provide more accurate search results for certain types of searches.
" but they demanded a copy of my id because my card was issued in another country than the one I live in at the moment"
Sounds like Steam was trying to prevent credit card fraud, most people think that is a good thing and it is not exactly a privacy concern since your id is tied to your credit card to start with.
If you watched the documentary (TPB: AFK) you'd know why. Most of them are pro-freedom. Their network engineer does it "for the challenge".
My reason not to give my ID, (even if it means paying for a service which can be taken free by showing an ID Pardus anyone???) is simply that I do not know when the database they use to store my ID will be either hacked by a script kiddie or raided by a foreign government. My domestic government already has full access to my person and data, there is no need to increase my accessibility (!)....
Don't get me wrong, I hate the MAFIAA as much as the next guy, but people seem to forget about following the money.
Music is one beast that can thrive from independant distribution and marketing. It's relatively cheap to build your own recording studio and make a name for yourself on facebook.
Movies on the other hand, do take years and millions to make. The money comes up-front from a studio and the studio hopes (expects?) to make money off of ticket sales, merchandise, DVD/Blu-Ray, etc... Yes, there are independant film makers out there, but without those box-office sales, we wouldn't have Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, or a slew of the other CGI-dependant movies with big-name actors/actresses.
Would anybody mind sharing how we can get to this eutopian world where every multi-billion dollar produced movie can be made free to the unwashed masses? It's not like a movie can tour the countryside and get money from concert sales...
Make a kick-ass movie, I will likely buy a ticket. Make a decent movie, one that I really want to see but not at current ticket prices, I will wait for it a while. But not forever. If it does not show up on Netflix I might rent it, burn it, then watch it at my convenience, then toss the disk. If I really want to see it & missed it at the flicks due to time constraints, I will download it. If the entertainment industry wants me to pay, make it convenient, let me watch it how & when I want to, & keep the price point reasonable. $6.99 for On Demand is too much as I can rent it for less. They can make money this way, but they might have to let go of their old business models.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT