The Pirate Bay is now hosted in North Korea, according to a statement released on their site, dateline Pyongyang.
thepiratebay.seThe Pirate Bay has been hunted in many countries around the world. Not for illegal activities but being persecuted for beliefs of freedom of information. Today, a new chapter is written in the history of the movement, as well as the history of the internets.
A week ago we could reveal that The Pirate Bay was accessed via Norway and Catalonya. The move was to ensure that these countries and regions will get attention to the issues at hand. Today we can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network.
This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.
We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand.
Dennis Rodman and the Pirate Bay. What a week for North Korea. (And by the way, we checked. It’s March 4, not April 1. And some on Hacker News have done a traceroute of the IP and found that it does seem to lead to North Korea.)
EDIT: More details on this situation from TorrentFreak.
File Sharing Sites are Already Going Down Even Without SOPA
So literally hours ago Megaupload.com got busted for its file sharing reputation because they have apparently cost the media industry over 500 million dollars in pirated content. Also, The Pirate Bay announced a few days ago that they aren’t going to be supporting .torrent files any longer, but rather redirect with magnet links. SOPA did not go through yet, but coincidentally, this site gets attacked. SOPA definitely was not the end of the anti-piracy initiative.
Articles can be found here:
The Pirate Bay
https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-will-stop-serving-torrents-120112/
Megaupload
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46059844#.Txh9-PmuMTD
MPAA “Rogue list” (Blacklist)
https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-lists-notorious-pirate-sites-to-u-s-government-111028/
The Pirate Bay to Fly 'Server Drones' to Avoid Law Enforcement
usnews.comThis news story seamlessly combines quite a few of my favorite things in the world:
The world’s largest and most resilient BitTorrent site plans to redefine “cloud computing” with a plan to move at least some of its servers onto unmanned drones miles above Sweden.
In a Sunday blog post, The Pirate Bay announced new “Low Orbit Server Stations” that will house the site’s servers and files on unmanned, GPS-controlled, aircraft drones.
One of the sites administrators, MrSpock, said with the advent of miniature computers such as the Raspberry Pi, a $35 micro computer the size of a thumb drive that includes a WiFi and SD card slot for storage, the site can take its servers far from any law enforcement.
“We’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air,” MrSpock wrote. “This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war.”
It’s not quite “internet in space,” but it’s getting there. I also love that they’re hip to the RasPi. Not to mention the poetry of using unmanned drones to piss off American lawmakers.
“The Pirate Bay has made an important change to its infrastructure. The world’s most famous BitTorrent site has switched its entire operation to the cloud. From now on The Pirate Bay will serve its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world. The move will cut costs, ensure better uptime, and make the site virtually invulnerable to police raids — all while keeping user data secure.”
—Pirate Bay Moves to The Cloud, Becomes Raid-Proof
Just as an observation: It’s interesting how resilient The Pirate Bay has been.
Religieus downloaden
Internetproviders Ziggo en XS4ALL moeten downloadsite The Pirate Bay blokkeren. Dat heeft de rechtbank in Den Haag besloten in een rechtszaak die door Stichting Brein was aangespannen.
Stichting Brein, de internetpolitie. Ik heb er geen hoge pet van op. Ze willen dat ik mijn mp3’s download via betaalsites, waar ieder liedje maar 99ct per nummer kost. Ik heb een iPod met 60GB aan opslag, dat zijn 15.000 mp3’s. Om die iPod te mogen vullen kost mij dat dus €14.850,-. Dus ik koop een iPod voor driehonderd euro en dan moet ik er nog eens bijna vijftienduizend voor betalen om überhaupt muziek te luisteren. En ze snappen niet dat ik dat niet doe, dat noemt zich Stichting Brein.
Brein heeft via de rechtbank afgedwongen dat de Zweedse aanbieder van torentbestanden geblokkeerd moet worden, zodat downloaden onmogelijk gemaakt wordt en streamen bemoeilijkt. Even wat uitleg. Torrents zijn de pakken waar de melk in zit en de melk is de illegale content. Downloaden is te vergelijken met het kopen van een pak melk. Streamen is dat pak melk al opdrinken nog voor je thuis bent.
Klinkt allemaal verdacht veel als boodschappen doen? Klopt, maar dan zonder te betalen.
Nu wil het feit dat Zweden piraterij onlangs erkend heeft als religie. Wat dus betekent dat Stichting Brein een gebedshuis wil verbieden. Het is zo jammer dat er zo weinig aanhangers zijn van dit geloof. Als illegaal downloaden een strikt Islamitische bezigheid zou zijn, was de hele wereld in rep en roer, nu alleen de nerds zoals ik.
Ik had het nooit gedacht, maar ik ben dus gelovige bij een wettelijk verboden religie! Het klinkt zo gaaf, bijna als een sekte. Onze leiders hadden moeten oproepen tot zelfmoord door van een hoge stapel pizzadozen te springen. Er had met bloed en uitwerpselen op de muur geklad moeten worden: “Viva la MP3!” of “Napster is mijn god!”. Maar nee, we brommen op facebook en twitter en hopen ‘trending topic te worden’.
In de naam van de vader, de zoon en de heilige YouTube. Retweet.
“TPB - We were down a few hours earlier today. There's no need to worry, we haven't been raided this time. We're only upgrading stuff since we're still growing. One of the technical things we always optimize is where to put our front machines. They are the ones that re-direct your traffic to a secret location. We have now decided to try to build something extraordinary. With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we're going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shot down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war. We're just starting so we haven't figured everything out yet. But we can't limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore. These Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we're building, that's more than enough. But when time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy's most resilient system. And all of the parts we'll use to build that system on will be downloadable.”
—The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay's Press Release Concerning SOPA and Mass Media in General
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
ThePirateBay.org's press release regarding SOPA
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture. Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever. So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: "stole") other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they're all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it's all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules. The reason they are always complainting about "pirates" today is simple. We've done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It's all based on the fact that we're competition. We've proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We're just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations. The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we've stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means "trash" in Swedish. The word PIPA means "a pipe" in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you'll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown. SOPA can't do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we'll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the "problem of piracy" one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they're creating "culture" but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they're fat. In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he's complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he's jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you'd get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News. Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can't access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We're sorry for that. THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
The Pirate Bay Is The World's Most Efficient Public Library [Falkvinge.net]
falkvinge.netThe way media piracy works is that one person or group purchases a work, and then shares it with millions of other people. This supposedly deprives the author or artist of those millions of people’s money. One group has acquired over 50 million media items, and makes each of them available to approximately 20 million people — which must be a tremendous hit to creative professionals’ wallets. This notorious institution is called the New York Public Library.
It begs the question why every author, filmmaker, and musician isn’t up in arms about the New York Public Library’s rampant sharing, while there’s a ton of opposition to the sharing habits of BitTorrent peers who use The Pirate Bay. After all, The Pirate Bay’s community shares significantly less than the New York Public Library: just 1 million items in 2008 (and the collection certainly hasn’t grown 5000% since then). The reason that The Pirate Bay is offensive, and the New York Public Library is not, is because of its efficiency.
Before the New York Public Library can share an item with you, you first need to schlep all the way to 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Then you have to walk around the massive building to find what you’re looking for. That is, if the item isn’t checked out. See, the New York Public Library has a peculiar system of storing their items: in finite, physical form. If you want to read a book or watch a film, there are only a few copies available. You can take an item home for a limited time (which forces other people to wait until you return it), but only if you live in New York State.
The Pirate Bay, on the other hand, requires you to type in a search term, click on a download button, and wait a little while. There’s no scarcity, no residency requirement, and you can do it from anywhere with Internet access. Significantly more efficient.
Either way, whether you read a library book or a torrented e-book, you no longer have to give the publisher any money. This has historically been okay, because in spite of everything, libraries haven’t killed publishing.
Physical public libraries — like the New York Public Library — are universally thought of as good for society. They provide free, open access to knowledge, culture, education, and even just entertainment to millions of people around the world. Anyone who demonizes the mission of these libraries is usually regarded as a wingnut, and not taken seriously. But it’s fairly mainstream to rail against filesharing sites like The Pirate Bay, Tuebl, and Take.fm. All these sites are doing is the same thing as brick-and-mortar libraries, but more effectively.
This is a comparison that really ought to have been pushed back when Napster was on the evening news. Filesharing sites and services are the most radically efficient public libraries that humanity has ever created. Never before has anything been better at giving the public open access to culture and knowledge. Mission accomplished. Why is this suddenly a bad thing?
If free and open access to all of human knowledge at the push of a button truly prevents our society’s beloved artists, authors, thinkers, and other creative people from putting food on their tables, then maybe it’s time to rethink how to put food on their tables.
Pirate Bay Founder Submits Emotional Plea for Pardon
torrentfreak.comAfter being convicted for his role in operating The Pirate Bay, site co-founder Peter Sunde should soon serve eight month jail sentence in a Swedish prison. Serving this sentence would be a disgrace to the justice system and a personal disaster, says Sunde, who submitted an emotional plea for pardon to the Swedish authorities this week.
After his sentence was made final earlier this year, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde was due to go prison early May.
However, due to various delays, he has yet to be committed to confinement.
This week in a final attempt to maintain his freedom, Sunde asked for a pardon. According to his lawyer, Sunde is suffering from serious mental health problems and being sent to prison would only worsen them.
It is further being reported that the head of the company where Sunde works – believed to be micro-payment company Flattr – has informed the court that if Sunde is imprisoned as planned, he will lose his job with the company.
Of most impact to those who have been following the Pirate Bay case, Sunde wrote the plea himself. The full 4000 word letter was published earlier this week on Sunde’s blog and has been translated to English by Rick Falkvinge.
“I ask pardon for a judicial system that has been steamrolled over by lobbyism and ignorance. But ultimately, I ask pardon for our future culture and communication. My case has significant impact on these,” Sunde starts his plea.
The Pirate Bay Moves to .SE Domain To Prevent Domain Seizure
torrentfreak.comso apparently freedom isn’t winning
