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The Pirate Bay down, forever?
- pmalynin 12y agoFix the title, please, its misleading.
- skrause 12y agoIt's already back up: https://thepiratebay.cr/ https://thepiratebay.cr/
- mintplant 12y agoNo, that's a proxy. Searches don't actually work because the main site is down.
- anonymous111 12y agoactually to test i did a search for aword art online 2 and downloaded episode 21... and it worked.
- witty_username 12y agoI must agree; the ads are way too crazy.
- eXpl0it3r 12y agoMaybe I'm one of these "jerks", but it's always amusing to me when people complain about ads on the internet, while there are so many different ad-blockers out there.
- bigbugbag 12y agoand more and more adblockers-blockers. The point is something is wrong with the web business model, or simply that it has one.
- bad_user 12y agoI never understood ad blockers or the people promoting ad blockers. People complain about ads, yet they are unwilling to pay for content, with the popularity of something like ThePirateBay being testament to that. And then, I can understand that many websites are showing distasteful ads, but if you don't like it, then don't use those websites. This gives a chance to competing websites, being practically like voting with your wallet. Because in truth, ad blockers help the companies that are showing distasteful ads, just like how piracy helped companies like Microsoft. EDIT: if you're gonna down-vote, at least mention why, otherwise I'm going to assume you are a just freeloader that wants everything for free.
- lucb1e 12y ago> yet they are unwilling to pay for content Hold it right there. The problem is that there is usually no way to pay. There is currently no way to automatically reimburse website owners when you just read a blogpost from them without going through the trouble of finding a donate button or emailing them for their paypal. I do use ad blockers and I donate whenever I find something useful. I pirate books and music and I want to pay when I like it. > don't use those websites That's not always as easy as it sounds. I've tried DuckDuckGo for weeks but I just can't get the same results, so I'm back to Google now. I'd love to pay google, but I can't and they keep serving me ads. Now Google is a pretty extreme example with all the data gathering, but you're almost forced to use some websites because it's a social norm (without Facebook, I'd miss a lot of events and messages from the school group). And you can't exactly decide whether ads on the page will be annoying before clicking on a link from Hacker News. > ad blockers help the companies that are showing distasteful ads, just like how piracy helped companies like Microsoft That is actually a good point, I hadn't thought of that before. Then again, I hardly use Microsoft products (just skype, but I could switch over to mumble any minute), but I see what you mean.
- bad_user 12y agoIf you pay or donate for the content you like, I've got no beef against you. Personally, I do pay Google for using Google Apps and I'm not getting ads in Gmail or the other services part of their Apps. Indeed, I still get ads in their Search, but that doesn't bother me personally and AdBlock Plus from what I've seen is allowing those ads in their default configuration. YouTube is the one Google service that greatly annoys me, which is the reason for why I've searched for alternatives and so I eventually ended up using Vimeo, SoundCloud and Google Music - US citizens have many more alternatives available, unfortunately for me I'm being blocked because I'm not from the US.
- orbifold 12y agoAds are often ugly, distracting and irrelevant (in the case of piratebay often a combination of online casinos, "adult facebook" and browser games). I hope in the future most purchase decisions are made by an intelligent personal assistant for us, based on various constraints set by the owner, that should at least eliminate ads for laundry detergents, toilet paper and food.
- mikeash 12y agoI don't use ad blockers simply because I don't want to engage in an arms race with web sites I visit. If ads on a site become too onerous then I'll move on. Until then, I'll keep the ads, and even click them sometimes if they're interesting (which really does happen from time to time, targeted advertising can work). However, I don't really complain about ads. I occasionally make fun of them (it's always hilarious when Amazon's targeted ad program decides it makes sense to advertise products I just bought from them) but if a site's ads get to the point where they're worthy of complaint, then the site is worthy of no longer being visited. I guess that means I find complaints weird for a somewhat different reason. Ads aren't shoved in your face, you choose to visit sites that host them. Talking to a web server and asking it, "Please send me the content of this page," and then complaining when it does what you requested is odd.
- Kequc 12y agoIn the last 8 years the pirate bay hasn't changed? It went open source and embraced magnet links entirely. Making it so that almost nothing was being hosted on the server itself. You can download the entire pirate bay in 90MB to put one up of your own. There are hundreds of pirate bays all over the world running on almost nothing allowing everyone to download the same things at the same speeds. [edit: It didn't go open source.] To suggest the pirate bay hasn't done anything is just lame. Not as lame as sending 20 something's to jail over it but getting there. The ads were because of legal defence fees, which can be huge.
- sysk 12y agoThe fact that it's hosting torrents in flat files or in database rows seems like a minor technical difference to me. Apart from that, the same broken UI doesn't seem to have changed much in the past 8 years. I didn't know that TPB was open source... surprised that the community didn't try to improve the UX a bit.
- meesterdude 12y agoActually, there is a difference between hosting the files and just linking to them, and is by no means a "minor technical difference". Although to be fair I think it was done not only to increase portability but also to decrease legal targeting, the latter of which seems like it didn't pan out in the end though may have thwarted some legal efforts along the way.
- coldtea 12y ago>Actually, there is a difference between hosting the files and just linking to them, and is by no means a "minor technical difference". From the technical side of showing the torrent/magnet links on the TPB page, it's indeed a minor difference.
- icebraining 12y agoBut a torrent was already just a link to the actual content.
- sebgeelen 12y agoThe blog title contain a question mark, I guess this HN topic should also have it...
- moonshinefe 12y agoHe never asserts that TPB is down forever. Misleading title.
- xerophyte12932 12y agoumm.... this works: https://thepiratebay.cr/ https://thepiratebay.cr/ Or is this not the "original" TPB?
- zerr 12y agoCan anybody explain what's the fuzz regarding pirate bay? I mean, there are tons of good torrent sites and search engines everybody use every day... I don't even remember when I last time used TPB...
- Aynatix 12y agourls?
- icebraining 12y agoIt's a symbol of resistance. The actual site doesn't really matter, as long as it's up.
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoBesides its symbolic values, it usually has useful comments.
- dagw 12y agoTPB was by far the most popular pirate site in the world. It is for example the only torrent site I regularly see mentioned in the news. To know of any other site you have to be fairly into the pirate scene and follow relevant blogs and forums. Very few people bother to do that. The vast majority of people who just want to see Guardians of the Galaxy without paying probably only know about TPB.
- ghshephard 12y agoThe authorities, indeed even the Movie industry, don't care about the niche search engines and torrent sites that the 1% of people into the scene use, they care about the big ones that 99% of the people use. By shutting down TPB, they've just eliminated the site that >99% of people are using, which is all that really matters to them. Moral: Stay off the Radar of those in power, and you can do whatever you want.
- evgen 12y agoAlternative explanation: when trying to solve a problem attack the biggest issue first. If TPB was the torrent site for a majority of users (and especially for casual users) then you attack that site first. Now that it is down you move on to #2, #3, etc. The niche sites are less important than the mega-site, but that does not mean that they are not on someone's radar or not going to be next on the list. The "why go after me when TPB is out there doing much worse to you" excuse also goes away.
- thesorrow 12y agoIs there any existing project or PoC for a blockchain based torrent index ?
- marcalc 12y agoWouldn't that beat the system?
- evgen 12y agoI do just love how people think a blockchain is magic crypto fairy dust that solves all problems...
- thesorrow 12y agoSolved problem with my bank account so far ;)
- Joeboy 12y agoIf you're trying to create a distributed, censorship resistant public record then it's a pretty sensible approach to investigate.
- forgottenpass 12y ago
- Aynatix 12y agoURLs to alternatives?
- kalms 12y agoKickass.so
- kirushik 12y agobtdigg.org
- icebraining 12y agohttp://torrentz.com/help#indexed http://torrentz.com/help#indexed
- cogburnd02 12y agoSometimes if you Google something with the keyword 'torrent' (e.g. "sia 1000 forms of fear torrent") even if Google doesn't give you anything relevant, you might get a Google results page that has a DMCA notice at the bottom; click that, it'll take you to Chilling Effects, and the badly-written (or excellently-written, depending on your POV) DMCA letters will have huge lists of alternatives to TPB, and relevant links to what you were Googling for. e.g. https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10197331 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10197331 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10203483 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10203483 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/1135322 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/1135322
- Lrigikithumer 12y agoExtremely misleading title...
- lala3000 12y agoAnybody interested in making the next generation TPB? Send me an email: lala3000@lelantos.org
- sly_g 12y agoWell, one shouldn't confuse middle age crisis with the failure of his project.
- ozh 12y agoSometimes I really don't get why stuff get upvoted and frontpaged on HN.
- vicpara 12y agoThis article doesn't get the point. It's old, doesn't change, conservative and outdated? Stop using it. The big problem is that TPB was taken offline not because it was buggy but because helped people copyrighted content.
- nickthemagicman 12y agoThank you so much. This is a seriouis strawman avoiding the actual issues of censorship, big govt overreach, abuse of power, and all that.
- Fastidious 12y agoThe article mentions KLF. What is that?
- timruffles 12y agoA band that once burnt £1,000,000 in cash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qui... It was pretty well their entire earnings from the band.
- tech-no-logical 12y agoa band. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF they retired at the top of their fame, and burned stuff both before (their own albums) and after (a million pounds).
- chippy 12y agoIt was the most popular music act in the world (or at least Europe) for a couple of years in the 90's. They owned and ran their own label. At the height of their success they deleted their entire back catalogue and all the physical records they created, in an attempt to remove themselves from the music industry, and they would have succeeded if they hadn't then gone on and burnt a million pounds in a small Scottish island which was something that people would not forget.
- Fuzzwah 12y agoI just want to add a link to the previous replies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way) is a 1988 book by The Timelords (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), better known as The KLF. It is a step by step guide to achieving a No.1 single with no money or musical skills, and a case study of the duo's UK novelty pop No. 1 "Doctorin' the Tardis". It is a great read and well worth tracking down.
- thewarrior 12y agoHow hard would it be to build a distributed hosting system for all the torrents ever on Piratebay ? Considering how one poster here says that all of the torrents upto 2013 fit into 90 MB , its quite feasible. It could tunnel over TOR to make tracking things a little more difficult.
- cpach 12y agoSure. But how would one manage updates? I.e. accepting new torrents.
- thewarrior 12y agoHow about just falling back to Gnutella P2P for the torrent hosting layer.
- cpach 12y agoIs that really a viable alternative? My impression is that people left the Gnutella network due to instability and floods of crap files.
- icebraining 12y agohttp://www.tribler.org/ http://www.tribler.org/
- RubyPinch 12y agoIsn't it already roughly done like that? the entire bittorrent magnet system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme which, if I'm not mistaken, will look for peers which have the relevant torrent file, and acquire and use that - - - and the 90MB is all the information /except/ torrent files, once again, if I'm not mistaken
- cpach 12y agoCurrently you still need a web site for searching the magnet links.
- no_future 12y agoCreated a website whose sole purpose is to distribute copyrighted files illegally(and includes a very popular "Porn" section I might add), yet he complains about some "sexist" company sending scantily clad girls to distribute freebies at a party in Stockholm(in Sweden, who traditionally has been very laid back about that type of thing). What a blowhard.
- kowdermeister 12y ago1 down, 99999 left.
- s_dev 12y agoI reckon the next big torrent site will be KickAss torrents @ kat.ph. Shame to see the guys behind TPB disenfranchised - they've earned it I guess from all the stress they've endured.
- edpichler 12y agoWhat is so special in TPB? I can't figure out. I have seen a dozen of better services. Any hidden feature I don't know?
- tomwalker 12y ago
- IkmoIkmo 12y agoWhat's that rule again? The one where if a title ends in a question mark, it can generally be answered with 'No'?
- mfisher87 12y agoNICE TITLE HN: "The pirate bay down forever (Peter Sunde's blog)" Peter Sunde's Blog: "The Pirate Bay down, forever?"
- ZoF 12y agoI'm genuinely curious as to why an admin hasn't changed this title yet. Certainly enough people have commented about it and it is a grossly misleading omission.
- evo_9 12y agoYeah pretty much the silliest thing about HN now - the endless title tweaking by the mods. And to what end? More than once the title has changed so significantly I thought it was an entirely new article.
- ZoF 12y agoI agree there should be something that signifies a changed title(perhaps just an appended asterisk) but I also think it is useful and oftentimes necessary functionality. How would it be 'silly' to add the question mark to the end of this posts title? Especially given that HN guidelines explicitly state that titles should be the headline of the article.
- tehaugmenter 12y agoNot knowing whose blog it is leads you believe it may be a factual article as well. I refuse to upvote misleading information like this.
- zodiakzz 12y agoSo even HN submitters will linkbait us now? A new low. Someone penalise them please.
- ZoF 12y ago>So even HN submitters will linkbait us now? Pretty much how I feel about this article. Here's a large excerpt(almost half of the article): " As a big fan of the KLF I once learned that it’s great to burn great things up. At least then you can quit while you’re on top. I think I left TPB just a little bit after that top, and not when it’s as shitty as it was when it was closed today. It feels good that it might have closed down forever, just a real shame the way it did that. A planned retirement would have given the community time and a way to kick off something new, something better, something faster, something more reliable and with no chance of corrupting itself. Something that had a soul and could retain it. " This is basically Peter Sunde lamenting the loss of values in the current iteration of TPB and stating he would be glad if it ended now. I'm not making any judgement as to whether his viewpoint is valid/warranted or not, but the implication this title gives(given that we know Peter Sunde was a former TPB employee) is that ThePirateBay is closing forever and this is an article explaining why. That's not what this is. There is nothing concrete here regarding TPB closing forever. This article provides no new information save the fact that this former contributor is discontent with the direction TPB has gone. Please note, I still find this article interesting; it is interesting to note how a key contributor during TPB's infancy feels about the site. The title remains misleading though.
- laxatives 12y agoI'm not familiar with Peter Sunde, but this sounds a lot like Peter isn't attached to Pirate Bay at all anymore.
- maccam912 12y agoCorrect. He has done time and decided to move on with his life. Stopped being involved with TPB in 2009 except for occasionally blogging about it like he did here.
- kbart 12y agoAnother fight against windmills? Google works just fine for searching .torrent files, I don't even get redirected to TPB lately.
- known 12y agohttps://tpb.pirati.cz/ https://tpb.pirati.cz/ FTW
- zymhan 12y agoSearch works, but links to the torrent's pages are broken.
- known 12y agohttp://unblockedpiratebay.com/ http://unblockedpiratebay.com/ FTW
- Sami_Lehtinen 12y agoI was kind of expecting them to build fully distributed system. But I got really disappointed when they claimed that "reverse proxy" / "load balancing" is latest in distributed systems.