Last week saw the end of an era when one of The Pirate Bay’s flagship domains – thepiratebay.se – stopped working. But now it’s working again. So, erm, I don’t know, let’s call that the start of a new era.
As previously reported, there have been various legal efforts by the authorities in Sweden to seize the always controversial file-sharing site’s Swedish domain which – alongside thepiratebay.org – is one of the main URLs associated with the piracy hub. For a time – fearing that the .org address might also be grabbed by the US authorities – Team TPB actually made the .se domain their primary URL.
But those legal efforts in Sweden have been long drawn out, and while it does look like the domain will ultimately be seized, the whole matter is still currently stuck with the country’s Supreme Court. Though the court has frozen the domain, meaning ownership of it can’t be transferred to another party with the .se domain registry.
It’s that freezing which is thought to explain why thepiratebay.se stopped working last week. The domain was up for renewal, and it’s likely the people currently running The Pirate Bay couldn’t do any renewing.
But now – according to Torrentfreak – the domain has been renewed for another year. It’s not clear quite how that happened, though it’s possible the court acted to instigate the renewal, otherwise the domain would ultimately end up back on the open market for anyone to buy. Either way, thepiratebay.se is operational again, speeding users through to the piracy platform’s current main URL, thepiratebay.org.
Except, of course, in countries where web-blocks currently apply, so that users instead see a copyright infringement warning from their internet service provider. As discussed on this week’s Setlist podcast, all this domain action probably has little impact on the piracy site, given that people tend to navigate the web by search engine rather than domain name these days.
Though regular file-sharers who had a bookmark set up using thepiratebay.se would have had to do a little admin last week. Unnecessary admin, as it turns out.
[from http://ift.tt/2lvivLP]
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