
Pirate Bay Releases ‘Pirate Browser’ to Thwart Censorship - derpenxyne
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-releases-pirate-browser-to-thwart-censorship-130810/
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northwest
> They are also working on a special BitTorrent-powered browser, which lets
> users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own.

Great idea.

If this came as a plugin, it would probably spread faster.

(This is btw how I think any next-gen social network should work - no more
central servers, everything distributed.)

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reustle
We could call it Diaspora!

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teddyh
The link shown in the screenshot is
[http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/](http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/) but I thought
TPB's "TOR hidden service" link was
[http://jntlesnev5o7zysa.onion/](http://jntlesnev5o7zysa.onion/) . I wonder
what's going on.

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sp332
You can use tor2web to (slowly) browse .onion sites.
[https://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.tor2web.org/](https://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.tor2web.org/)
looks like TPB to me.

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teddyh
But that was my point; _both_ sites look like TPB. Which is the real one and
which is a potentially logging proxy?

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jacquesm
What guarantees do you have that the real one doesn't log?

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teddyh
OK, none. But at least the real one has a proven history of not injecting
malware. Or something, I don't know. Logging was just an example of what a
malicious middleman might do.

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benologist
The real one that peddles trashy spyware, scamware and toolbars for revenue?

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belorn
Here I was wondering if your statement was FUD from someone who revenue comes
directly from the game industry, or if the statement was based on facts.

To that, I went to the old hidden service url, and looked at what kind of ads
was presented[1]. Did I see any spyware? No. Did I see any scamware? No. Any
toolbars? No.

What I did find was sex ads of plenty. That makes sense. What other businesses
would risk being accessory to copyright infringement, but an industry that
often need to hide themselve (unjustly, but that's an other story)? An obvious
observation from the trial is that any kind of trading with the TPB, be that
bandwidth, hosting environment, electricity or anything whatsoever can be
enough to land you in jail for accessory charges.

Conclusion. benologist comment was FUD, likely influenced by his own revenue
source. However, if he provide a source for his statement, I am fully willing
to change my opinion.

[1]: (first time I ever went and looked for ads)

~~~
benologist
[http://imgur.com/Bma34Ml](http://imgur.com/Bma34Ml)
[http://imgur.com/eDcgGKJ](http://imgur.com/eDcgGKJ)

1) Those big green buttons everywhere are some adware-slash-spyware-slash-
shitware-hard-to-remove installer for iLivid which hijacks browsers, installs
toolbars, etc: [http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-
Nort...](http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-
Norton/ilivid/td-p/841500)

2) The banking thing is a get rich quick scam: [http://www.banker-
secrets.com/](http://www.banker-secrets.com/)

3) "Anonymous download" is another random installer.

4) The "play now" / "watch now" images are ads for some scabby online
streaming video site that doesn't even have the advertised video, just a
Google Adsense block over a different video.

5) Unseen, below the fold they recommend a torrent client that is "No Spyware,
100% Free 100% safe and Trusted", and pays for every install that kindly
bundles even more shitware: "Nortan Security Scan", "Babylon Toolbar",
"IWantThis", "DealPly", "BrowseForChange", a Firefox addon and a Chrome addon:
[http://www.bitlordapp.com/uninstall](http://www.bitlordapp.com/uninstall)

6) Also unseen is a popup peddling some shitware called MacKeeper:
[http://www.cultofmac.com/170522/is-mackeeper-really-a-
scam/](http://www.cultofmac.com/170522/is-mackeeper-really-a-scam/)

It doesn't take billions of pageviews a month riddled with this garbage to pay
for servers or bandwidth unless they got locked into a multi-decade contract a
decade ago and now operate on an enormous fleet of decade-old servers at
decade-ago prices.

Conclusion: It's really easy to believe these guys are "fighting for you"
because that's the image their PR machine has very carefully cultivated while
exploiting _everyone_.

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belorn
I guess you must be visiting their regular un-tor site, and not the two tor
addresses above. The ads there wouldn't even load, and only showed "Your ads
here" text fields, except for the pop with porn/gambling. The green bars to
iLivid is still there through, a fact they share with download.com

Disliking the download manager is indeed a fair point, but I don't see how its
connected to which tor site is the official one. Both links to it.

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agumonkey
They should have named it after a real pirate ship :
[http://www.noblesandcourtiers.org/famous-pirate-
ships.htm](http://www.noblesandcourtiers.org/famous-pirate-ships.htm)

Delivery sounds fine.

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angersock
I've frequently heard complaints that bittorrent folks using Tor put unhelpful
strain on the network--is the distribution of this browser going to be a
problem in that way?

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sb057
This has nothing to do with routing Bittorent traffic.

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aj700
Yes, the package as is will not route the bittorent traffic over tor, but
since this is for people who don't even know how to use proxies, some of them
will probably start configuring their torrent clients to use the same proxies.

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haakon
If they don't even know how to use proxies, I somehow doubt they'd even
consider fiddling about in their BitTorrent client's proxy settings. How would
they even know what to put in there?

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rob_b
Checked out YouTube lately? Some content isn't bad, but there seems to be just
as much noise that gives horrible advice and no one should waste their time
watching.

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LiveTheDream
Potentially stupid question – how is this different from the Tor browser
bundle?

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sb057
It appears that this is designed to prevent censorship, as opposed to Tor's
broader goal of anonymization.

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alan_cx
Cool, but why not Opera in off-road mode?

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L4mppu
Because opera is just reskinned chrome.

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recursive
How so? There's more to a browser than a rendering engine you know.

