Why the end of Pirate Bay won’t make a difference
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Bittorrent, illegal, Pirate Bay, pirate on
Nobody is ever going to admit to downloading a Bittorrent file publicly, but most people are aware of the Pirate Bay - a tracker that allows people to download music, games, software and more for free.
Since it was first put online its been pretty upfront about what it’s been doing, treating letters from the companies its been pirating with sometimes humorous disrespect, together with an portraying themselves as having an almost revolutionary attitude.
But the jailing of the Pirate bay founders as well as their failed appeal looks to have finally crushed their battle against the big companies, as it was revealed today that the Pirate Bay was sold to a private company.
Most people will immediately think of Napster. Napster had similar battles over copyright and finally backed down to the record companies, and now it is a paid-for service.
Pirate Bay can’t be the same as it was with private ownership, which has already said that content providers and copyright owners will “receive compensation.”
To me it just sounds like the Pirate Bay founders have given up the ghost with their likely imprisonment and are trying to make as much money as possible before it happens.
It’s disappointing because the founders made big sounds about not making a profit and being all about “sticking it to the man”.
Unless they invest the money back into something similar to the Pirate Bay or pro-piracy politics I’d call it taking the money and running - although admittedly, its likely they will have a few legal fees needing paying off!
Thing is though, in the files sharing scheme of things, this will make no difference. There is a multitude of torrent sites such as Torrent Reactor and MiniNova which are capable to rising up to take this place.
They won’t have the in your face attitude of the Pirate Bay owners, but they will do exactly the same thing and probably less likely to be caught.
So when you think about it, this whole Pirate Bay copyright case was a big waste of time. The organisations bringing the case may have won the battle, but the war is still being fought - and unless they find a way to embrace people getting content for free - they will lose.
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