Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Pirate Bay Loses Its Main Domain Name In Court Battle (thehackernews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the peer-to-peer dept.

Dave Knott writes: The world's most popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay, is suffering a major blow after the Swedish Court ruled Thursday that it will seize the domain names 'ThePirateBay.se' and 'PirateBay.se' and hand over them to the state. This is the latest development in an ongoing legal tug-of-war between The Pirate Bay and Swedish prosecutors, which has at various times seen the courts rule in favor of either side, only to see the case proceed via further appeals. Despite previous criminal convictions, the torrent site has always remained functioning by moving to different web domains several times. However, this time, The Pirate Bay loses its main .SE domain, the world's 225th most popular website according to the Alexa ranking, as reported by the Swedish newspaper DN.

3 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Open and Free DNS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why we need an open and free alternative to the current DNS system, which can't so readily be controlled by governments. I despise piracy, but I don't agree with seizing domain names. It's way too easy for this power to be abused for other things like censorship. Could Germany use this to force hate speech or Holocaust denial sites offline, for example? While I find such things repugnant, the only speech truly in need of protection is that which some people find offensive.

  2. Find an alternative to DNS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DNS had a purely functional role back when it was invented, but that was an era of academic innocence, and those days are long gone.

    Since then, domain names have become an instrument of suppression and censorship by governments and the copyright cartel, a business for domain squatters and litigants, an advertising vehicle for ISPs, and an all-round protection racket for the registrars. DNS has acquired many of the bad properties of a centralized system instead of the robustness that was originally intended for the Internet, and it is now a significant liability.

    There are many other ways in which names can be associated with IP addresses and other online data. Pick one of them, or invent a new protocol and describe it in an ad hoc RFC, then use it. People will follow.

    Suggested properties for a replacement: distributed, resistent to damage and censorship, cryptographically secure, free of charge and not requiring centralized registration, immutable, and persistent forever instead of suffering the domain bit-rot we have today. Also, very importantly, it should use names that are structurally distinct from domain names in DNS, to avoid friction. Leave that old system to the old guard, may it keep them happy. It's time for a better one.

  3. You can't ban an idea by Trachman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can put founders in prison, you can seize the servers. You can intimidate the ISP. You can ban the domain name. You can't ban an idea, whose time has come. Once the genie is out of the bottle, you will not summon it back. Once people get the taste of free stuff, there is no going back.

    P.S. Technologies have moved, and right know the pirate bay does not even need a domain.
    P.S.2. I am not defending piracy. However claims about billions and billions of revenue lost are unfounded. Only rarely a movie is worth even watching.