
Thepiratebay.com domain has been suspended - throwaway2048
http://thepiratebay.com/
======
kisstheblade
Well this doesn't matter much.

You can download your torrents from other sites.

But an interesting new development has occured where I live (and what I hear
in other europena countries as well).

Lawyers get the rights holders permissions to enforce their copyrights, and
then they connect to the torrent swarms and start collecting IP addressess.

Then they get a court order for the ISP's to release the IP owner's personal
information.

Then they send a shakedown letter, were they threaten to sue you if you don't
pay up 600 euros or some such sum.

It's "nice" to know that it is that easy to get ISP's to hand over customer
information.

So, always use protection (VPN) when torrenting, kids! :)

~~~
myztic
New development? Actually they have been doing that probably all around the
world for years now.

A friend of mine in Germany also got such a letter once and wrote something
back along the lines of "Wasn't me, don't know what you are talking about" and
he never heard from them again.

They try to profit from the fear of everyday people who rather pay up front,
because they don't want to risk that the case goes to court, no matter how
unlikely this might be. And it's even understandable, ordinary folks probably
really panic when they see such a letter and all the legal talk and underlying
threats that are made.

It's as despicable as patent trolling.

First avoid such a situation:

-) use vpn if possible (check with their policies, whether they allow torrent traffic or maybe they ban it from certain servers, preferably use a provider that does not log)

-) quite simply never download newer material with big companies behind them from public trackers. most of the times these letters regard the newest Hollywood movies, a current album by a big pop star or the newest game everyone has been waiting for, not Taxi Driver, The Godfather Trilogy, Quake 3 or the weird Japanese pop band from the 80s you are into

and if you are in such a situation:

-) consult your lawyer or search on the Internet how to properly respond, do not just pay!

~~~
JamyDev
Very interesting (Defcon) talk about a similar store from the owner of
textfiles.com

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY)

------
gruez
> This domain has been suspended for one of the following reasons:

> * This is a new domain name and you have not yet validated your contact
> details.

> * This domain has recently been modified or transferred and you have not yet
> validated your contact details.

> * An annual validation email was sent to your contact details but you have
> not responded.

I don't see what the fuss is about

~~~
mindslight
When names are routinely erased for political reasons, why would one ever give
credence to the official story?

~~~
andreyf
Is organizing the violation of copyright laws political speech, or do you mean
something else by "political reasons"?

~~~
venomsnake
Can you explain how giving a checksum of a file is violation of copyright?

~~~
cperciva
Intent matters.

Driving a taxi is legal, and telling people where to find a bank is legal, but
if you start advertising a "bank robber target selection and getaway service"
then you'll end up being thrown in jail for bank robbery, because you were
knowingly assisting in the crime even though your actions taken in isolation
were entirely legal.

Similarly, providing someone with a checksum of a file is not copyright
infringement in itself, but it becomes illegal when you do it _with the intent
of assisting copyright infringement_.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
To use your analogy TPB are literally only providing a taxi service though,
they don't know or care if you're going to the bank and if you're making a
deposit, recovering stolen property or robbing it.

In USA format shifting is allowed, downloading a format shifted copy of media
is logically equivalent and morally probably slightly superior (less
time/energy waste?). Don't know if that line of reasoning had been tested yet?
There are countries where it is not a tort to download nor upload what would
otherwise be considered copyright material.

In short TPB does nothing in terms of contributory infringement that other
indexing sites (Google, Bing, etc) don't do.

There behaviour is the same no matter your intent; do you have a more
convincing argument that accounts for common carrier protections and explains
why of I get a work using a link from Google it's not infringing but getting
one from TPB makes it tortuous?

~~~
vinceguidry
> In short TPB does nothing in terms of contributory infringement that other
> indexing sites (Google, Bing, etc) don't do.

That is an argument that you are making, not a foregone conclusion. First off,
the branding matters when it comes to intent. The name, "The Pirate Bay"
leaves it pretty clear what they're expecting you to do with the site.

Also, there's the fact that Google and other search engines are responsive to
DMCA requests, TPB is not. Finally, there's the political positions of the
organization running the site.

Their service is much closer to cperciva's analogy than it is to a normal
search engine.

------
cenal
Finally a casualty of those emails that domain owners get where we are
"required" to verify our information for ICANN.

~~~
Natsu
I wonder if (when?) someone will make a program that auto-validates the ICANN
emails and ignores all spam.

~~~
trentmb
I hope not- that seems like the perfect balance between invasive information
gathering and sane validation measures.

------
roddux
I haven't been able to access the .com/.se/etc in years, since it was blocked
in ~2012 by most ISPs here in the UK.

That said, proxies are but two clicks away and faster than connecting to a
VPN.

~~~
DanBC
Some of the proxies are pretty scary though.

~~~
davb
As are some VPNs. It's concerning that so many people route all their traffic
(when connected) over some unknown third parties network. Default gateway and
server pushed DNS. Only HSTS and certificate pinning would prevent their
traffic being sniffed or tampered with.

~~~
wrong_internet
Huh? Unless your endpoint peers directly with your ISP, you _always_ route
over unknown third party networks.

~~~
davb
True but it's much easier for a malicious player to set up a VPN service
selling cheap a anonymity as a way to gather MITM targets than it is to set up
an ISP or transit provider.

------
yoshamano
I've always found their .onion domain to be the most reliable.

[http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/](http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/)

~~~
jlgaddis
How would verify that this, indeed, the "official" TPB .onion site?

~~~
viraptor
How would you verify the .se domain in the first place? I think both are not
something we can verify.

~~~
heinrich5991
Probably by going to the Wikipedia page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay).

~~~
viraptor
And how does wikipedia know who the .se belongs to? What I'm getting at is -
mostly we don't know who runs it. The best we can know is that danger people
run onion and se if they cross link to each other.

~~~
heinrich5991
The .se domain is well-known, even through word of mouth. Thus, I can be
fairly certain that it is actually a domain that belongs to the project. I
have no such information about the onion domain.

------
eco
Has anyone seen ICANN suspend a domain for invalid contact details before?

~~~
swalberg
If I'm reading this right, the registrar suspended the domain because the
contact details weren't validated by the customer. It wasn't ICANN.

It seems to be up to the registrar -- other registrars I use send an email
that requires no action if the details are correct. But one I used previously
suspended a domain of ours because the guy that registered it ignored the
email.

------
binoyxj
More on this here: [https://torrentfreak.com/seven-pirate-bay-domains-have-
been-...](https://torrentfreak.com/seven-pirate-bay-domains-have-been-
suspended-151215/)

------
hasenj
If you google "the pirate bay" usually the first link will be the working one.

Currently it seems to be the .se domain, but I just tried it and redirected to
.vg

------
LeoPanthera
I haven't used the .com in ages. They have a bunch of domains, I think. .vg
springs to mind

------
jokoon
TPB has been a target for a long time now, one of their founder said he was
starting to give up. Anyway there are many better alternatives, although I'm a
little worried about who is running them, but I guess they can be trusted...

Anyhow, TOR will still be a safe haven for torrents, and even if it isn't,
there are many decentralized techs which are being ready to serve torrents.

~~~
wut42
>one of their founder said he was starting to give up

Nobody of the original team (tiamo, brokep, ...) are still working on TPB.
They've given up long time ago (at the time of the trial).

>although I'm a little worried about who is running them, but I guess they can
be trusted

TPB is now managed by someone else, and they've as shady as the the others.

>TOR will still be a safe haven for torrents

Tor isn't good for p2p, see: [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-
over-tor-isnt-go...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-
isnt-good-idea)

>there are many decentralized techs which are being ready to serve torrents

You can really easily build your own search engines by listening/crawling the
DHT.

~~~
jug
From a pirate's perspective, Tor can be useful for BitTorrent sites, except
for sending the actual BitTorrent traffic over it. I think the greatest
problem here isn't that file sharers keep getting caught en masse so that we
have that kind of need, but the risk and effort necessary to even run a P2P
site. Tor in itself, as an anonymizing network, can help a lot there as long
as you don't mess up. That is, as a .torrent file store and search engine.

------
wut42
The same happened with thepiratebay.org last week.

------
aaronem
TPB had a .com?

~~~
jakob223
It just redirected to .se

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150315015705/http://www.thepir...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150315015705/http://www.thepiratebay.com/)

------
awqrre
Usually, the ICANN suspension pages that I've seen look more like this [1], is
this fake?

[1] [http://coastnetworks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/IcanSusp...](http://coastnetworks.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/03/IcanSuspensionNotice.jpg)

------
staunch
DNS will be decentralized in the future. This will be one of the motivating
examples.

~~~
alanpost
How could DNS become more decentralized? You already have your choice of TLDs,
registrars, ISPs, and software. If that's not good enough you can host a
public key under .onion.

~~~
nly
Namecoin basically.

~~~
kuschku
And how do I get my specific domain name that I want to have via namecoin?

How do I get rid of illegal domain squatters?

There are good reasons for centralized systems.

~~~
hellbanner
To get it, you have to register first. What is an illegal domain squatter?
Someone using your business name? Namespaces are bound to collide.. think of
all the JohnSmiths who want JohnSmith.com

~~~
kuschku
So, the solution to a namespace collision is "first come, first serve"?

------
rathish_g
Oops, I haven't validated any domains that I own in over 5 years.

~~~
blfr
You probably have. Many registrars only send you an email that requires no
action if your contact info is up to date. OVH does this for example.

------
Aaronik
This could matter if it fell into the wrong hands. It'd be a great trojan
delivery mechanism for people unfortunate enough to download and open
something from the site.

------
liviu
Same thing for the [http://piratebrowser.com](http://piratebrowser.com)

~~~
bbrian
[http://pirateproxy.nl/](http://pirateproxy.nl/) is what I use in Ireland, due
to court ordered blocks, and it's working – as evidenced by the Alice in
Chains box set I just downloaded that I once bought on CD and have no idea
what happened to in the meantime!

------
michaelbuddy
Never knew .com was used. Was always .org and about 12 other country suffixes

------
gooserock
Does this have anything to do with the fact that CISPA was signed into law
today?

~~~
andreyf
You mean CISA.

~~~
jokoon
I wish there was a clear list of all those "cyber laws" attempts, with dates,
differences, histories, what their strategy were. I've lost count of those
attempted laws.

~~~
andreyf
There are a lot of those, but only two for information sharing, as far as I'm
aware. CISPA failed, and CISA replaced it. One difference is described by
tptacek here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763837)

