Ahoy! Pirate Bay has sunk!
Pirate Bay has been shut down! The Music Industry is saved!
How naive can the world be?
OK, so police have successfully shut down the world’s largest bit torrent site, jailed the men behind the site and given them a little fine of £1.5million. But can they realistically say that they are one step closer to stopping music downloads forever?
Sites like Pirate Bay index and track torrent files across the web so people can easily find and download music. Think of it like an Argos catalogue - all you have to do flick through the pages to pick up something nice.
Except instead of Argos’ credit crunch beating prices, torrents can be downloaded for the fabulous price of nothing. Pretty nifty in times like these. And you can pick up just about anything you want – books, films, CDs – of course they might take 5 days to download destroying your internet speed and seriously damaging your electricity bill. And there is the risk you’re downloading a virus masquerading as a CD. But hey it’s free at the time! Oh yeah and don’t forget the fact its illegal. It’s easy to forget though.
We all know those annoying adverts about piracy at the start of DVDs which tell you that you wouldn’t steal a handbag (although if it was a pretty designer one I’m sure I and many others would seriously consider it) or that you wouldn’t go into a shop to steal a DVD. Bless, they try their best to stop those pesky pirates and put off their customers from purchasing such pilfered items.
There is just one problem... Pirates don’t tend to copy that bit. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
Everyone knows downloading films or music is illegal but the internet is a big place. Surely its sheer size gives us anonymity. No one will ever guess it was you that downloaded that album or that single. It will always be someone else that gets caught.
Which is exactly the view that hosting sites, like Pirate Bay share. That is until the ignorance starts to wear thin. Authorities are targeting these big sites. Two years ago the biggest invite-only torrent site, Oink, was closed down. Now Pirate Bay the biggest public torrent site has been shut down too. It’s getting scary out there in the hosting world.
It may not be enough to stop your regular Joe from downloading illegally but this might start putting doubts in the minds of those who create sites like Pirate Bay or Oink. And without the handy Argos type catalogue indexing the music you want it’s going to be a case of looking yourself. Might just be easier to buy the CD – they only cost a fiver nowadays anyway.
Just this week another invite-only site specialising in the distribution of leaked albums was closed by its owner for no apparent reason. It-leaked was one of the most popular download sites. Could this be a case of owners running scared?
Probably not.
Rumour has it the owner took a hissy huff at members mouthing off about albums not being put up quick enough. They’re getting the music free and now they want it available faster. Greed comes to mind.
Pirate Bay may be gone but they went down fighting like proper bandits. If you’ve got enough balls to open up an illegal downloading site, in the first place, the prospect of a few record labels and police authorities huffing and puffing isn’t that scary.
The internet is a nice big brick house for the guilty to hide in. Someone is going to have to find a bigger, badder wolf to blow that house down.
Think of illegal downloading sites being like the mythical Hydra. Chop one head off and up pops another two. The music industry hasn’t got a chance.