Difference between revisions of "OK The Pirate Bay"

Revision as of 19:09, 28 March 2018

The Pirate Bay's Logo

The Pirate Bay, promoted as the nations largest and most resilient BitTorrent website is the largest torrent website currently on the web ^[1]. The domain was founded in 2003 by the Swedish think tank Piratbyran and allows users to search, download, and contribute torrent files ^[2]. These torrent files create peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent algorithm, and due to the nature of the files shared, the website has fallen under many ethical and legal concerns that even led some countries to censor the website altogether. Despite the problems and issues with copyright and piracy, the website is still fully alive and active today.

History

The Pirate Bay was initially founded by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij in September of 2003 under the Swedish anti-copyright group Piratbyran, otherwise known as "The Piracy Bureau."^[3] It is a web portal that functions on the BitTorrent network, allowing for users to download copyrighted content free of charge. The Pirate Bay hit the mainstream in 2006 after the website was shutdown for three days due to a raid of Stockholm Data Center. After coming back online the website attracted more users than ever and was watched even closer by law enforcement. In 2012 The Pirate Bay moved to magnet links and stopped offering torrent files for larger torrents. This allowed the website to be able to be run with proxies. Since The Pirate Bay is censored in some nations, the proxies allowed IP addresses to be masked and thus brought in millions of new users.

Legal Concerns

As a result of the ability to download copyrighted content, the website has been at the center of many legal and regulatory actions. The founders have often been accused of aiding in the creation of copyrighted material available to the public and in its distribution ^[4]. Various nations have went as far as censoring the website all together. Netherlands placed orders on Dutch Internet service providers requiring them to block access to the Pirate Bay entirely^[5]. In the US, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills were created to help stop internet piracy. Under SOPA, it was made a criminal offence to be caught streaming copyrighted content, and as a result of its implications, was widely opposed by many of the internet's biggest players - including Wikipedia and Google. Due to this, the bill was postponed until a wider agreement on it's consequences could be agreed upon. These bills were created in support of those concerned about the affect of internet piracy on the US economy.

Ethical Concerns

Due to the nature of the website, The Pirate Bay faces a conflux of ethical issues. It acts as a hub where any album, movie, application, program, and textbook is available for free and on demand. The question then arises, how is this even allowed? Despite being illegal for users to download copyrighted material, virtually no user has faced a form of criminal prosecution. The ability to mask IP addresses and the anonymity of proxies has helped aid this evasion of prosecution while also creating even more ethical issues. The international community widely accepts The Pirate Bay as the largest culprit in the global copyright infringement yet to this day the website is up and running to its full capacity.

The world has pressed governments to stop this infringement of intellectual property yet despite raids and new laws the website has been fully functional and only increased in users. Furthermore, some of the members of the founding team for the website were found guilty of copyright infringement yet only faced three years in jail. This did nothing to fully stop the functions of the website. After the 2006 raid from the Swedish government, the website opened up and created back up's of their servers in both Belgium and Russia, ensuring the longevity of the platform ^[6].

Many wonder how the website seems to continue to function despite the various raids and acts by law enforcement to stop it. To answer this we must look at two important aspects in regards to The Pirate Bay's operations^[7].

First, the website stopped allowing the use of files that were shared by 10 or more people. In 2012 the website moved to magnet links ^[8]. Magnet links, rather than being identified by location, are identified by content and data. This effectively protects user's IP addresses and allows for the use of proxies - further masking who is downloading each file.

Second, the website switched over to cloud hosting providers in 2012. This cut costs, improved speed, and enhanced user security. Now The Pirate Bay can operate seamlessly across borders since servers are not required to be on the same provider. Many commercial cloud hosting providers do not even know they are hosts - this proves to be an ethical issue of its own. As a result of this, the basic features keeping the website alive are owned and operated by The Pirate Bay, they all just exist in separate international locations with the important data backed up elsewhere ^[9]. In all, this maintains The Pirate Bay as the copyright beast it is.

Solutions

12 years later and The Pirate Bay is still in business. What can be done?

Solutions to this problem are complex and not easy. As the issue of piracy has been happening for decades, coming up with a simple solution is not possible. Law enforcement has tried to crack down on copyright infringement for years but this has proven to be both costly and difficult to achieve. Due to the shear scale of which copyrighted material is downloaded from The Pirate Bay it is difficult to pinpoint one person and make an example, and even then the chances of being caught are so low that many are not afraid of using the website at all. This task seems to be one that is simply not possible because of the progression and advancement of information in our society today. Technology is developing in a path that gives access to copyrighted files with ease and without doubt. People are not afraid to download copyright material because nothing happens. Overall, the ethical issues of The Pirate Bay seems impossible to stop.

Notes

1. ↑ http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22362/20141217/history-pirate-bay.htm
2. ↑ http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22362/20141217/history-pirate-bay.htm
3. ↑ https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/16/pirate-bay-shutdown-explainer/
4. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jillian-friedman/pirate-bay-shut-down_b_6303120.html
5. ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jillian-friedman/pirate-bay-shut-down_b_6303120.html
6. ↑ http://variety.com/2016/digital/opinion/pirate-bay-raid-ten-years-ago-1201785938/
7. ↑ http://georgiapoliticalreview.com/the-pirate-bay-an-ethical-technical-conundrum/
8. ↑ http://georgiapoliticalreview.com/the-pirate-bay-an-ethical-technical-conundrum/
9. ↑ https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/JICES-10-2014-0044