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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.

55 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Whack-a-mole by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    /sarcasm Oh noes! Only 2 domains shot down; another million left to pick from!

    Good luck trying to stomp out piracy.

    1. Re:Whack-a-mole by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      /sarcasm Oh noes! Only 2 domains shot down; another million left to pick from!

      Good luck trying to stomp out piracy.

      Know one not a .se domain?

    2. Re:Whack-a-mole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      https://thepiratebay.org/ , as linked in the summary, appears to work.

    3. Re:Whack-a-mole by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      thepiratebay.se just redirects to the piratebay.org now.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  2. Coming to a server near you by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    www.TheBiratePay.se

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re: Coming to a server near you by danomac · · Score: 4, Funny

      I was thinking thepiratebay.arr, that would be appropriate!

    2. Re:Coming to a server near you by wulfmans · · Score: 1

      https://thepiratebay.org/brows...

    3. Re:Coming to a server near you by dcollins117 · · Score: 1

      Sounds like pig latin. I guess they could go all out with www.HeTayIratePayAyBay

  3. Re: Republicans gonna... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They have infested nearly every country.

  4. In remembrance of Prince by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The Bay Formerly Known as Pirate"

    1. Re:In remembrance of Prince by zero_out · · Score: 1

      Too soon, yo~

  5. 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.

    1. Re:Open and Free DNS by waylon531 · · Score: 1

      There's also namecoin

    2. Re:Open and Free DNS by Thanatiel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Open and Free DNS ? I believe you underestimate the problem.

      There is no need for an alternative for DNS.
      The only need is for an alternative TLD or a parallel ROOT : DNS itself is easy.

      At home I had some issues with an ISP doing funky redirections on DNS.
      I ended up buying an ARM box (Odroid, Raspberry, ...) and simply setup a validating/caching nameserver. This of course could be setup on one's desktop computer.

      If I want to add rules for a .whatever I easily can. I only need to have the zone somewhere. Either edited "by hand" on the machine, either downloaded from some data server (http, ftp, ...) either loaded from an authoritative nameserver (probably the easiest as nobody in his right mind blocks 53).

      It would have to be set on multiple servers around the world, from a known v4 and v6. list of IPs.
      It also should be a secure zone to avoid tampering. Between NSEC & NSEC3 the choice amounts as how easy it would be to enumerate the content of the zone.

      Making this a package/installer for less technically-minded users isn't a challenge.

      And now comes the Open and Free : the "only" real problem to solve here would be fair/decentralized management. And yes, this is a biggie. There are no good rules (it always involve challenge of ownership at some point and in the real world : laws, rules and lawyers).
      A few ideas come to mind. For example, something involving a PGP chain of trust authenticating zones/configurations. I simply don't think they would work in the end.

      The current "monopoly" requires a lot work from teams of technical operators, developers, lawyers and, yes, politicians.
      It's hard to put it a fault because protection of for what may be construed as criminal activity is not its chief concern.

      In my humble opinion there are two realistic choices: using a TLD that has no reason to comply to laws of another country, or changing the law of said country.

      PS: thank you so much Slashdot to make me spend 20 minutes to find that the acronym that covers NSEC and SEC3 was lame. Yet another reason to forget you exist.

      --
      Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
    3. Re:Open and Free DNS by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      This is why we need an open and free alternative to the current DNS system, which can't so readily be controlled by governments.

      Ok, would you like one open and free alternative to DNS, or would you like several thousand? Because that's probably what will happen, all of them resolving disputes in different ways until no-one knows what the hell they're looking at any more.

      Here's an alternative to DNS - put an entry in your hosts file.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    4. Re:Open and Free DNS by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

      You despise piracy? Why? Do you feel that the people behind Pirate Bay deserved jail time? Do you think copyright law is fair? How long should copyright last? There are many other ways to earn a living from art, copyright is no necessity for that.

      Laws aren't holy. They can be bad and wrong, and have unintended negative consequences. They can be solely for profiteering, to force everyone to purchase some product or service that is unnecessary and only available through a few or even just one vendor. Consider Prohibition in the US. The ban on alcohol was based on the view that drunkenness was solely the fault of the drunkard, a moral failing, and should be outlawed and punishable as if having a drink was a crime. One factor they overlooked was that new manufacturing methods had unintentionally raised the percentage of alcohol in alcoholic drinks, and people who weren't drunkards became so on the same amount of drink they'd always had. Prohibition was eventually repealed, but those who profited from Prohibition suddenly saw their cash flow shut down and struck back by whipping up public hysteria over other drugs, eventually morphing Prohibition into the War on Drugs. Another widely unpopular and frequently violated law was the national 55 mph speed limit. People simply wanted to drive faster. In such cases, mass violation is one of the most powerful ways to force a change in the law.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    5. Re:Open and Free DNS by theblkadder · · Score: 1

      It has been done, and is trivial to do. The problem isn't technical, it's social; people actually need to use it...

      --
      Earth is a single point of failure.
  6. Re:Pirate Barry by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    How about TheRealPirateBay.org?
    And after that, TheTorrentSiteFormerlyKnownAsTheRealPirateBay.org?

  7. Re: Pirate Barry by Frankzy · · Score: 1

    My vote is for PiratBerra.se.... it is Swedish after all.

  8. NEWSFLASH: Seizure of tpb domain ... by Qbertino · · Score: 2

    ... forches hundreds of millions of internet users to waste 2 minutes of their lives searching for a new torrent site!
    Film at eleven.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  9. 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.

    1. Re:Find an alternative to DNS by Falos · · Score: 1

      Young millennial here, from where I'm sitting it's always been a private-club racket. I can still sense how it used to be, though.

    2. Re:Find an alternative to DNS by glitch! · · Score: 1

      I agree with your idea. I have thought about a DNS system with history, kind of like archive.org. I did not come up with a foolproof way to use older (correct, before censorship) DNS entries, but I was thinking that some special prefix to the domain name would indicate that I want an older DNS lookup. Maybe this archival nameserver would cache this against my current IP address and continue feeding my browser that IP address from my last requested date.

      It would also be nice if this DNS archive would allow downloads of their global DNS archive so that lower level nameservers could use that data as a first level DNS cache. If there were some major DNS disruption, this could help everyone keep operating.

      --
      A dingo ate my sig...
  10. 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.

    1. Re:You can't ban an idea by blogagog · · Score: 1

      You've piqued my interest. How can they continue without getting a new domain name first, Trachman?

    2. Re:You can't ban an idea by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      thepiratebay.org works pretty good.

    3. Re:You can't ban an idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Tor onion network. Problem solved with a massive uptake in Tor users if they went that route.

    4. Re:You can't ban an idea by DarkTempes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don't need a specific domain name to run an HTTP server.

      They can use direct IPs and/or modified hosts files, other domain names run by registrars in more favorable countries, TOR, alternative DNS roots, etc.
      See: Sci-Hub, KAT, the already innumerable existing piratebay proxies, etc

      Even the Great Firewall of China can't keep people from accessing information on the internet that they're determined to access and western countries certainly haven't resorted to near that level of internet oppression yet.

      All they're really doing is making copyright infringement less convenient and possibly causing TPB to lose some users while Google PageRank adjusts.

      Honestly, I believe more money (and man hours) is being wasted in court than is saved.
      Consider how many years it takes for courts to deal with things like this and that it takes just a few minutes and dollars to purchase a new domain name.

    5. Re:You can't ban an idea by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      There are 196 countries in the world and even more domain suffixes than that. The Pirate bay has had mirrors for a long time, one is even linked in the summary. They can also change the name as often as they like, simple posts to a forum will spread the word of the new domain name within hours (like what currently happens)

    6. Re:You can't ban an idea by Z80a · · Score: 1

      You can defeat ideas with better ideas.

    7. Re:You can't ban an idea by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      Once people get the taste of free stuff, there is no going back.

      Just remember, if you find it acceptable to not pay people for the work they have produced, the same can happen to you.

      Or when it happens to you will it be a travesty and you'll whine about it?

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    8. Re:You can't ban an idea by Tom · · Score: 1

      Only rarely a movie is worth even watching.

      That's not true. However, the movie industry is still focussed on box office numbers and blockbuster record breaking numbers to report to the press. Music has recovered from the Napster days in large part thanks to iTunes and its likes, which make buying music online (or directly on your smartphone) so convenient and cheap that there's simply no reason to search for a torrent anymore.

      I used to buy a lot of CDs. Then I downloaded a lot of .mp3 and now I'm back to buying a lot of music.

      Convenience, immediate availability, a reasonably good search and interface and no DRM. That's how you sell digital content online.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    9. Re:You can't ban an idea by Tom · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I sell stuff online that sometimes gets pirated. I don't whine about it. It's a fact of life. When I find out, I send a friendly takedown notice to the site in question and forget about it. Anyway can't prevent it.

      My personal counter at one time was to sell some of my stuff for the price of "what you think its worth". It was a very interesting experience and a lot of people paid well. About half chose the minimum price I had set, the other half spent more, sometimes several times more.

      People, in general, aren't as greedy as they are made out to be if you stop treating them like criminals.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    10. Re:You can't ban an idea by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Once people get the taste of free stuff

      For many people free doesn't come into it. Unencumbered and in the format I want maybe? I've actually pirated stuff that I've bought before for this reason.

      Only rarely a movie is worth even watching.

      The statistics from the movie industry and the amount of money Americans voluntarily pay disagrees with you, as do many review aggregations and the current trend of movies smashing box office records.

    11. Re:You can't ban an idea by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      pretty sure your wrong.

    12. Re:You can't ban an idea by aliquis · · Score: 1

      You can defeat ideas with better ideas.

      But the field isn't fair.

      Ideas backed by threats of violence and restricted freedom if you don't surrender become over-powered.

    13. Re:You can't ban an idea by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Just remember, if you find it acceptable to not pay people for the work they have produced, the same can happen to you.

      Or when it happens to you will it be a travesty and you'll whine about it?

      Or point out that's a complete non-sequitur outside of copyright.

    14. Re:You can't ban an idea by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Just remember, if you find it acceptable to not pay people for the work they have produced, the same can happen to you.

      Or when it happens to you will it be a travesty and you'll whine about it?

      Only a socialist statist would complain about falling wages or Hollywood accounting. Or did you mean something else?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  11. Re:Pirate Barry by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Funny

    pirateMcBayFace?

    (someone had to say it)

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  12. Re:Pirate Barry by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

    How about ThePirateBay.onion? (Or rather, ThePirateBay[gibberish].onion, since that's how onion domain names work...)

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  13. Domains, shmomains... by wwalker · · Score: 2

    Who types out the entire domain names any more? I just start typing whatever I need in the address bar, and the browser autocompletes it for me to whatever was the last thepiratebay.* domain I used (right now it's .org). And if that is somehow not available, it'll take 2 more seconds to google the next dot whatever. I guess I should be glad it's not my (taxpayer) money that are wasted paying for this nonsense, since I don't live in Sweden.

    1. Re:Domains, shmomains... by iris-n · · Score: 2

      This is not a good strategy. If you google "Kick Ass Torrents" the first results are impostors that will serve you malware. Google refuses to give you the correct result. Wikipedia, though, works really well for that.

      --
      entropy happens
    2. Re:Domains, shmomains... by Gussington · · Score: 2

      This is not a good strategy. If you google "Kick Ass Torrents" the first results are impostors that will serve you malware. Google refuses to give you the correct result. Wikipedia, though, works really well for that.

      torrentz.eu

      Let it find whatever torrent sites have you torrent for you. Never need to remember any other URL

    3. Re:Domains, shmomains... by iris-n · · Score: 1

      Haha, just tried to open the website, and it's blocked in the UK. Thanks for sharing, anyway.

      --
      entropy happens
    4. Re:Domains, shmomains... by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      It's currently legal for me to search for a website.

      I can research things without committing a crime. Else every student who writes a report on the holocaust would be guilty of committing genocide because they searched for it?

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  14. Re:Pirate Barry by Nethead · · Score: 2

    I'll be glad when you get a day job.

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  15. Re:Pirate Barry by KiloByte · · Score: 1

    Something like this?

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  16. Does it has a a hidden service? by allo · · Score: 1

    Why not? Not for the tracker, but for the search interface ...

  17. Re:So get a new domain by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

    > I guess they will just have to spend 10 Euros on a new one now? Great success!

    Guess we're going to see court paperwork which claims they're not following direct court orders, and then they get 20 years in the slammer? Good luck running the site from the jail cell...

  18. Re:Pirate Barry by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    How about:
    the-pirate-bay.se
    the_priate_bay.se
    and my personal favorite:
    WeArePriateBay.se

  19. Re: Republicans gonna... by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    Swedish republicans are an anti-monarchy movement.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  20. Re:So get a new domain by wodencafe · · Score: 1

    Why do you suppose TPB is still up, after incurring the wrath of the Movie / Music Industries, and Governments everywhere?

  21. Re:Pirate Barry by wkwilley2 · · Score: 1

    It's time to move up to PirateSea.com

    --
    Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
  22. Re:Pirate Barry by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

    No, something like what Facebook did, searching until they found a hash or key or whatever that happened to spell out "Facebook."

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  23. hilarious by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    the pirates got their name pirated !!