The Pirate Bay to defy international crackdown on filesharing websites
Site says it will bypass attempts to shut it down with a more covert system for illicitly downloading films and music
- Josh Halliday
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 February 2012 17.55 GMT
- Article history
Closed door ... the high court has signalled that Pirate Bay should be blocked in the UK. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Press Association
The Pirate Bay is planning to defy an international crackdown onfilesharing websites after the high court in London signalled that the site should be blocked in the UK.
The filesharing giant said it will bypass attempts to shut it down with a more covert system for illicitly downloading films and music.
The act of defiance comes as the net begins to tighten on some of the web's biggest filesharing sites, following the closure of Kim Dotcom's Megaupload by US authorities last month.
The high court is expected to tell UK internet service providers, such as BT and BSkyB, to block access to The Pirate Bay for UK users. The court ruled on Monday that the site breaches copyright laws on a large scale.
But The Pirate Bay has said it will sidestep the crackdown by "our common enemies" with a new downloading system to be unveiled next week.
In a statement on its official Facebook page, the site said that from 29 February it will stop offering downloads via torrents – which allow users to download music or films directly from their internet browser – and switch to so-called "magnet links" where users do not download files directly from the website.
"Before you go 'oh ma goood why why why?!!!', please understand that it's a necessary move in the saga known as The Pirate Bay," the website said in the message published late on Monday.
"Not having torrents will be a bit cheaper for us but it will also make it harder for our common enemies to stop us (which they can't. But everything that makes it harder for them brings more lolz [laugh out loud] to our lips). So please get used to magnets, cause they are here to stay."
The Pirate Bay ended its statement pledging to fight the controversial anti-piracy pact ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which has been roundly criticised by open internet advocates.
The Pirate Bay first moved towards magnet links in November 2009, but this is the first time the site has pledged to abandon torrent files entirely.
The move will make The Pirate Bay easier for users to distribute – a copy of the filesharing system will fit on a removable memory stick – and require less bandwidth to host.
The owners of The Pirate Bay are unknown – but courts in the UK and other jurisdictions have moved against the site in spite of this.
A Seychelles firm called Reservella Ltd has been claimed to be behind the site, according to the high court judgment handed down by Mr Justice Arnold on Monday, but this is disputed.
The four Swedish founders of the site – Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström – were in 2010 found guilty of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
Earlier this month The Pirate Bay quickly switched its domain name to the Swedish .se suffix in a bid to prevent US authorities from seizing control of the site.
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