Les Hazlewood
I think this is absolutely freaking hilarious. A friend pointed me to a traceroute to the PirateBay.org – which shows an awesome host name for their domain. I’ve included the traceroute below for your viewing pleasure. But if you need a little background first:
For those of you who don’t know, the PirateBay.org makes .torrent files available via a search-based interface. They don’t actually host any content themselves, and are for all intents and purposes, an indexing service just like Google. However, the RIAA and MPAA hate them, because often those .torrents point to copyrighted material. This isn’t the PirateBay’s fault – they just index pointers to data – not the data itself. Google indexes copyrighted material though, and they even cache it on their servers, and you don’t hear the MPAA or RIAA going after Google, do you!?!?
Anyway, the PirateBay.org server farm was hosted in Sweden until the U.S. government pressured Swedish law enforcement to raid it. Under Swedish law, what the Pirate Bay is doing is perfectly legal – they’re not storing or serving any copyrighted material, which gives them the green light under their country’s legal system. But, the Swedish cops caved under US pressure. Incidentally, this seriously pisses off Swedish citizens – they don’t have enough police to service their own country, and here is a large police team, under pressure from the big bad Americans, wasting government time and money to stop a perfectly legal service, just because the U.S. thinks their laws should be followed everywhere.
The raid team also confiscated servers in the same rack space that didn’t belong to PirateBay.org, really !#&@%ing up about 200 other Swedish businesses. This pissed the Swedes off even more.
So, after all this, what happened? The piratebay.org just moved their servers to another country, and were up and running in less than 2 days! I LOVE the internet.
So, the following traceroute shows you what you (and what any MPAA or RIAA employees) would see when trying to find the machine that hosts piratebay.org:
TraceRoute to 83.140.176.146 [piratebay.org]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 1 0 0 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 0 0 0 66.98.241.16 gphou-66-98-241-16.ev1.net
3 1 1 0 38.99.206.173 -
4 1 1 1 66.28.64.61 g0-1.core01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com
5 28 27 27 154.54.2.14 p13-0.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com
6 81 47 47 66.28.4.109 p14-0.core01.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com
7 124 126 124 130.117.0.45 p3-0.core01.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com
8 124 124 124 130.117.1.78 ten3-2.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com
9 146 146 146 195.66.224.243 -
10 156 155 156 83.140.176.146 hey.mpaa.and.apb.bite.my.shiny.metal.ass.thepiratebay.org
Trace complete
That is just so freaking cool. If you want to show your support for these guys, buy a t-shirt from their online store, or donate some raw cash.
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I love your comments about the uselessness of the heavy handed law enforcement techniques which are so dearly loved by everyone’s favorite colluded mega-corps. I didn’t realize (naive, no – stupid, yes!) that the US actually pressured the Swedes.
However, I have read that PirateBay is perhaps a little less than an an innocent bystander in all this. It’s true of course that as a torrent search engine they don’t store copyrighted material on their servers – from what I understand the machines that were taken were confiscated to obtain information on end-users. But isn’t there something of a credo in PirateBay’s philosophy, which openly embraces pirated software, as a kind of populist reaction against not just the RIAA, but corporations large and small around the world?
I actually do think that this kind of activism has a place – particularly in regards to the RIAA, which is a moribund, useless drag on the creative arts and which, though kicking and screaming, is being dragged surely to it’s grave. I’ve long argued that high-end apps like Maya, 3d Studio Max, SoftIMAGE, and even Adobe’s Creative Suite has more to gain by tacitly allowing pirated versions of their software on amateur’s machines than by spending large sums of capital and reputation (pointlessly) fighting it. Those amateurs are tomorrow’s professionals, and their becoming proficient with a particular app will likely impact it’s presence in the professional, paying market of tomorrow.
Microsoft more or less made this point for me when they abandoned a great deal of their anti-piracy efforts in China and Taiwan when, in response to those efforts the Chinese simply started switching to Open Source and Linux. MS realized as long as those businesses and governments were using Windows, even if not technically legally, that they still had access to and influence over those desktops. Which in turn promotes the market leadership of their real prize, monopo- I mean, Office.
So in a sense, the foolish tactics of the RIAA/US/Swedish governments is only accelerating the change they seek to prevent, and in any case cannot adequately cope with a new kind of politics, a politics they have so far appeared unable to recognize: viral activism.
i think Philippines is the perfect place for piratebay
cuz here in our place pirate rules!!!..
my comment is, why are they arresting the owner of the piratebay? He/She does not committed a criminal act, the bossiness they run, purely Legal. not “Illegal” My Question is Mr. Swedish and US Police Enforcer, did he or did she comment a criminal act? and my answer is, NO, because the business He/She is Legal. the way you arrest He/She, by using forced of Law, that is a Harassment, where is the Human-Rights of that person. that’s all
when does the Piratebay.org up again?
The laws and rules are made by the rulers to rule its people but themselves. The government has committed an illegal act for arresting the owners. The world is involved in power game. The power comes from the power of a gun. China was cornered and bullied or not respected before they launched the atomic bomb. The people must form a union to vote all governments out for such bad behavior.