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Pirate Bay 'borrows' visitor CPUs to mine virtual coins
Piracy websites can't really depend on ads, so how do they make money? By using your PC's processor cycles, apparently -- whether you want to or not. Visitors to The Pirate Bay have discovered JavaScript code in the website that 'borrows' your processor for the sake of mining Monero digital coins. It doesn't always happen (it mainly appears in search results and category listings), but you'll definitely notice the sharp spike in CPU usage when it kicks in.
Developers put game on Pirate Bay to help cash-strapped players
Game studios normally bend over backwards to discourage pirates and keep titles off of any piracy sites, but don't tell that to Acid Wizard. When the studio saw that a young player asked for a refund for its horror game Darkwood out of a fear that his parents wouldn't like the cost of the game, it decided to offer a safe, unprotected copy of the game on The Pirate Bay. It wants to offer you a chance to play Darkwood if money's simply too tight. There are only two requests: think about buying the game when you can, and don't buy it through key resellers like G2A.
Kanye caught on Pirate Bay while his album streams on Pornhub (update)
In the picture above, you'll spot Joel Zimmerman's alter ego, Deadmau5, standing side by side with Kanye West. Last night, the rodent-headed musician was putting a little distance between him and his Tidal buddy, for apparently using Pirate Bay to download a software synthesiser called Xfer Serum (a $190 purchase). Deadmau5 was responding to a tweet from West that simply read "Day 3," along with a screen shot of what he was listening to (Sufjan Stevens' "Death with Dignity"). Zimmerman noticed West's other browser tabs in view, which included one for Xfer Records' Serum, one for "Pirate Bay Torrent Xfe..." and another for "The 50 best VSTs" (software instruments). Oh, and the surest giveaway you're browsing something dodgy: MacKeeper.
The Pirate Bay begins testing browser streaming
The Pirate Bay torrent site has blown around so much, you might not even be sure where it is right now (thepiratebay.se, we think). It's still kicking though, and now has a new trick -- streaming directly from your browser. It's able to do that thanks to a new plugin from Torrents Time, using the same technology as Popcorn Time (the second version, not the original). If you dare, all you have to do is download the plugin for Firefox, Internet Explorer or Chrome, and when you go to a given Pirate Bay torrent, you'll get the option to stream.
The Pirate Bay won't be blocked on its home turf
Numerous countries order their internet service providers block The Pirate Bay, but its home country of Sweden won't be one of them... at least, for now. A Stockholm court has ruled that Sweden can't make ISPs block the piracy site, since those companies aren't responsible for what their customers do. The networks aren't participating in any crimes, according to the ruling -- they're just the delivery medium.
The Pirate Bay's new network is making ISP blocks useless
Despite global efforts to put the kibosh on infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay (TPB), the lair of internet swashbucklers is proving almost impossible to sack. Swedish police succeeded in taking the site down late last year, only for it to reappear the following month. And stronger than ever it seems, thanks to a new distribution partner that inadvertently circumvents most ISP-level blocks. When TPB rose from the ashes, it drafted in middleman CloudFlare to help deal with the colossal amount of traffic coming to the site.
UK ISPs start restricting sites that help bypass The Pirate Bay blocks
The never-ending game of whack-a-mole between file-sharing advocates, internet service providers (ISPs) and copyright holders continues. The Pirate Bay (TPB) has become a tricky site for torrenters to access, and it's given birth to numerous proxy sites that circumvent the blocks set up by individual ISPs. Copyright holders cottoned on pretty quickly and have been asking ISPs to block the proxy sites that are still giving torrenters access to illegal downloads. So what's happening now? Well, some dedicated users have set up sites that keep an up-to-date list of the best TPB proxy databases. It's all rather convoluted, but now, according to TorrentFreak, British ISPs are cracking down on those sites too.
The Pirate Bay comes back weeks after a police raid
We're starting to wonder if it's nigh-on impossible to keep The Pirate Bay down. Just weeks after Swedish police raided the bootleg file site and knocked it offline, it's back -- TorrentFreak reports that almost everything is up and running once again, complete with a phoenix graphic (above) to taunt authorities. With that said, it's not quite the same experience that many veteran users would remember. While the pre-raid content remains intact, many of the original staffers are locked out of this version. They're planning to create their own version of the Bay that supposedly restores the community spirit of the original. It's not clear if that'll work, but it sounds like cops and copyright holders may have created more problems for themselves in trying to take down one of the best-known pirate havens.
The Pirate Bay shutdown: the whole story (so far)
For the past decade, if you wanted to download copyrighted material and didn't want to pay for it, it's likely you turned to The Pirate Bay. Up until a police raid took it offline last week, it was the most popular place to grab Sunday's episode of The Newsroom or Gone Girl months before the Blu-ray hits stores. You didn't have to log in to some arcane message board or know someone to get an invite -- the anonymous file-sharing site was open to everybody and made piracy as simple as a Google search. That's what scared Hollywood.
Co-founder of Pirate Bay says it should stay closed
Earlier this week, Sweden's police took down The Pirate Bay, the world's most contentious torrent site. One person who won't be mourning the closure is co-creator Peter Sunde, who would be happier if the site never came back. Just one month after being released from prison, Sunde took to his blog to describe his disillusionment with what the website had grown to represent and its "distasteful" adverts.
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde released from prison
Authorities can't keep the entire Pirate Bay crew under lock and key, it seems. Just days after the arrest of Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde has been released from prison; he spent only five months behind bars rather than the originally intended eight, albeit in a high security wing. Sunde is focused primarily on "sleep, eat and travel" at this stage, so it'll be a short while before we know exactly what he does next. However, media executives probably won't have reason to panic any time soon. He was pouring most of his energy into legal services like encrypted chat (Heml.is) and micro donations (Flattr) before the police caught him, and it's likely that he'll pick up where he left off. [Image credit: SHARE Conference, Flickr]
Google sees over 1 million daily takedown requests for pirate links
While sites like The Pirate Bay are busy improving the experience for the torrent-loving crowd, Google's facing the task of processing an extreme amount of removal request for pirate links. According to a recent transparency report on the matter, Google is now seeing more than 1 million DMCA takedown notices per day. In the previous week alone, for instance, the tech giant was asked to remove about 8 million results from its search engine. As TorrentFreak points out, the amount of copyright removal notices sent to Google has seen a tremendous spike in recent times -- it wasn't long ago that the number of takedown requests was in the low-hundreds for the entire year. With the growth of the internet as a whole, however, it's easy to see how that's come to be. You can peruse the report in full here, if you're into that sort of thing. [Image credit: will never stop us/Flickr ]
Engadget Daily: the battle for VR, Bose sues Beats, and more!
Today, we explore the world of VR, watch Bose sue Beats, learn about a few tools to help you get the most out of Netflix and look at our favorite 11 laptops you can buy right now. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last 24 hours.
The Pirate Bay makes it even easier to torrent on the go
Regardless of what you may be searching for on The Pirate Bay, it wouldn't hurt to be doing so with style and ease of use. In consideration of this, the popular (and controversial) torrent-sharing property has launched a brand new mobile site, featuring a rather subtle, less clustered look that should make browsing through it a much more enjoyable experience. As TorrentFreak points out, this is the first time Pirate Bay's done a major design revamp in almost a decade, a change likely to be considered a breath of fresh air by its users, particularly those who like to use the website on devices like smartphones and tablets. The Pirate Bay doesn't appear to be redirecting all mobile visitors to the new page yet, but you can check it out here right about now.
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde caught after two years on the run
A Swedish court convicted Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde for copyright infringement back in 2012, but he never served his eight-month jail sentence -- despite an Interpol warrant, the piracy advocate has been living in Germany for years. His freedom has come to an abrupt halt, though, as police arrested him this weekend at a farm in Sweden's Skane region. It's not clear why Sunde was in the country that wanted him behind bars, but TorrentFreak suggests that he might have been visiting family.
Dutch ISPs overturn Pirate Bay blocking order, get pieces of eight for the trouble
In many countries, ISPs are regarded as partly culpable for the P-word that's now synonymous with the internet. We're talking, of course, about piracy. Government and legal pressure has forced several ISPs to block sites known for illegal file distribution, with The Pirate Bay being a prime target due to its popularity. Today, however, a court in The Netherlands has overturned an order compelling two of the country's major ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, based on the belief that's it's ineffective and tantamount to censorship. Local anti-piracy group BREIN, with the help of a judge and gavel, put the restriction in place in 2012 -- the ISPs appealed, and won. The Dutch court that's sided with the providers has said that a block is not only against the freedom of information, but referenced a report showing it had little impact on torrent traffic. (As most of us know, for every site that's squashed by the banhammer, there is a swarm of others providing the same services.) It gets even worse for BREIN, too, as now it's been ordered to pay 326,000 euros (around $445,000) for the trouble it's caused. That should buy at least a couple of lawyers lunch and new suits, we'd imagine.
Pirate Bay releases 'PirateBrowser' to sail round censorship, mark ten years on the ocean wave
The Pirate Bay may be many things, but one that it is not, is a pushover. It's moved location, received continuous heat from various courts, and, of course, done some time. But still, it doesn't give up. The latest effort is a browser designed to help you access the torrent site in locations where ISPs won't let you. It's essentially a re-tooled version of Firefox, with a Tor client (not for anonymity) and proxy tools bundled in. The windows-only (for now) release comes on the 10th anniversary of the controversial site, with the developers telling TorrentFreak that this is just the start of a revised effort against web censorship. A sentiment that will resonate with an ever increasing number.
Pirate Bay goes on the lam from Sweden, heads for safe harbor in Spain, Norway
Despite a recent effort to move its servers to the cloud, Pirate Bay will be moving its base out of Sweden thanks to recent legal pressure. The Swedish Pirate Party that hosted the torrent site has been feeling heat from the film and music industry-backed Swedish Rights Alliance, which gave it until today to cut ties in order to avoid a lawsuit. As a result, the site has moved its operations to servers in Spain and Norway hosted by Pirate Parties there, saying it's had a contingency plan in place for awhile to do so. Anway, if the embattled site has to keep criss-crossing the seas while fighting legal battles to stay afloat, it might make for another good documentary.
UK High Court rules ISPs to block Pirate Bay, forgets it ain't the boss anymore
The High Court has ruled that British ISPs must block web-browsing citizens from accessing the infamous Pirate Bay. The controversial ruling comes just six months after the European Court of Justice (a superior court) declared that companies like Sky and TalkTalk were protected against injunctions to block, filter or monitor internet traffic for that purpose. Virgin Media told the BBC that it would comply, before sensibly adding that censorship measures like this are ineffective in the long term.
Pirate Bay founders lose final appeal in Sweden, prison looms on the horizon
It looks like Pirate Bay's legal drama has finally come to a close in Sweden, where the Supreme Court today turned down the site's final appeal. At the center of the case are the file sharing site's founders -- Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström -- who have been battling Swedish prosecutors for quite a few years now. After being convicted of facilitating copyright infringement, the trio was initially sentenced to prison. They appealed the ruling in 2010 and, though they failed to overturn it, managed to see their 12-month sentences reduced by between two and eight months. Today, though, their final attempts were shot down, with the Court's dismissal. The fines and prison terms remain the same: ten months for Neij, eight months for Sunde and four for Lundström. There's also a fourth co-founder involved, Gottfrid Svartholm, who has been absent from several hearings. Under today's ruling, his original 12-month sentence will stand, and the four men will have to pay a total of $6.8 million in damages. Because the case has dragged on for at least five years, however, there's a chance that the sentences could be reduced by 12 months (bringing them down to zero), as is common in the Swedish legal system. The decision on this matter, however, remains with the court. TorrentFreak reports that at least one defendant intends to appeal to the European Court of Justice, though the results wouldn't have any effect on Sweden's decision.
