pirate

New Pirate Bay site skirts standard ISP blocks

File-sharing specialist The Pirate Bay has launched a site that appears to be designed to help subscribers get around court-mandated blockades in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.

According to TorrentFreak, the new site is also optimized to work with proxies, in case its Internet Protocol address gets blocked.

"In most countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked, it's done by a domain and IP address filter," TorrentFreak writes. "But since TPB added a new IP address at 194.71.107.80, blocked subscribers can access the site again without problems. At least for … Read more

Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks fight off crippling attacks

Someone is angry at whistle-blower site WikiLeaks and Swedish BitTorrent file-sharing site Pirate Bay. Both sites have been battling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this week, but it's not clear who is behind the attacks and why they are being targeted. The sites appear to be up now.

Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks have been the cause celebre of hackers affiliated with groups like Anonymous, so much so that their opponents -- including government agencies and movie industry trade groups -- have found themselves to be targets of DDoS attacks in the past.

Yesterday, WikiLeaks tweeted that it "has been … Read more

Lone Anon hater claims responsibility for Pirate Bay attack

A person who claims to be a former member of the Anonymous hacker group has claimed responsibility for knocking The Pirate Bay offline for over a day.

The claim is unconfirmed but a person calling himself "Nyre" left a message on Pastebin yesterday, saying he was the person who launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on The Pirate Bay, one of the world's best-known file-sharing services. The site was back up this morning.

As for the reason Nyre claims to have launched the attack: "The Pirate Bay was a press-release Website for Anonymous." … Read more

Who is behind murky DDoS attack against The Pirate Bay?

There's a good whodunit developing over at The Pirate Bay, the popular BitTorrent file-sharing service.

An unknown entity has launched a large distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against The Pirate Bay and rendered the site largely inaccessible for more than a day. The Pirate Bay posted a note to its Facebook page confirming the attack. Site operators wrote: "We don't know who's behind it but we have our suspicions."

Suspicions are all anybody seems to have at this point. Here's a list of the top suspects and where they stand on the issue.

The Motion … Read more

Dutch court rules Pirate Bay must be blocked -- or else

The Pirate Bay is under fire in the Netherlands today after a court in The Hague ordered Dutch Internet service providers to block the site, which is infamous for allegedly abetting the piracy of copyrighted material.

Under the terms of the ruling, Dutch ISPs T-Mobile, UPC, KPN, and others, must block the Web site or face a stiff fine. According to Netherlands-based Tweakers.net (Translate), which was first to report on the news, the companies will have 10 days from the time of notice to block the Web site. After that, they'll be charged 10,000 euros ($12,961) … Read more

Court: Britain's ISPs must block Pirate Bay

Five of the U.K.'s largest Internet service providers have been ordered to prevent their subscribers from accessing the file-sharing Web site The Pirate Bay.

Britain's High Court said today that Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media would have to block access to The Pirate Bay, following an earlier ruling in February over the role of the site in copyright infringement.

The blocks will come into place over the course of "the next few weeks" following today's decision. The case was brought about by a number of music labels acting on behalf of … Read more

The Pirate Bay walks the plank on Windows Live Messenger?

Microsoft has decided to block access to The Pirate Bay from Windows Live Messenger, according to a new report.

When users try to send an instant message to a friend with a link from The Pirate Bay, Windows Live Messenger displays a warning, saying that the link is "blocked because it was reported as unsafe." TorrentFreak, which was first to report on the news, says that the same issue occurs in third-party instant-messaging clients, like Pidgin, when logged into Live Messenger.

Microsoft's apparent decision to block The Pirate Bay might conjure up privacy fears among those who … Read more

The Pirate Bay sparks new criminal investigation

The torrent-downloading site The Pirate Bay announced last week in a blog post that the Swedish authorities had launched a new criminal investigation into its activities.

"The Swedish district attorney Fredrik Ingblad initiated a new investigation into The Pirate Bay back in 2010," the blog said. "Information has been leaked to us every now and then by multiple sources, almost on a regular basis."

Today, the torrent news site TorrentFreak confirmed that the Swedish police were looking into The Pirate Bay. Apparently, authorities requested that the Swedish hosting company Binero, where The Pirate Bay is registered, … Read more

You spin my head right round, right round...

After only 15 minutes of play, I'm already disoriented and feeling queasy but I'm going back in; Hexagon is both dizzying and addicting.

Developed by Terry Cavanagh (known for VVVVVV), Hexagon throws you in an orbital endurance run where you must guide a triangle around a (you guessed it) hexagon and dodge collapsing obstacles. Sounds simple, right? Try surviving for even 20 seconds on your first couple of tries.

Each stage is separated by 10-second runs and themes itself after a shape. Each level throws faster, more-complex patterns to try and crush your three-sided friend. In addition to … Read more