h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently the Swedish police this morning raided the offices of thepiratebay.org and have seized its servers. That's a bit of a blow

Are we talking BitTorrent?

We are indeed talking BitTorrent.

They had a somewhat cavalier attitude to what they hosted, based upon the fact that under Swedish law hosting a torrent file was not deemed to be piracy. Well at least not until today that is.

One of the fun things they had was a page of communications beteen themselves and various law firms around the world who had complained about them. It was remarkable that all these lawyers would go on complaining that the site was providing pirated content etc etc, when of course a tracker is no such thing, it's an itsy-bitsy little file that describes another file, nothing more. The lawyers would also banh on about how they were going to prosecute the site under US law etc etc. They were awfully rude in return - giving patronising lessons in geography and what a tracker actually meant etc.

It was all rather good fun in a schoolboy humour sort of a way

That is a shame. Looks like I'm stuck with Mininova and eDonkey now.

B

Usenet guys all the way.

Yes, but if you want long retention, full selection of groups, good speed and a large download limit, then that is going to start costing you serious money.

I've had accounts with Athenanews (fast, but limited download limit) and 100proofnews (unlimited download, but slow slow slow) with mixed success. Plus with Usenet you've got the problem of searching all the thousands of bloody groups looking for what you are after.

Well I have an acocunt with NewsDemon which allthough is a tenner a month gives massive retention, great speeds and unlimited downloads.

And if you use .nzb files and a decent newsreader such as "Newsbin Pro" or "Newsleecher" then you can go to "Newzbin" and no header searching at all.

I will never go back to torrents haveing used newsgroups for 6 months.

Being old-school with the newsgroups - I read and post text on them , and don't use them just for binaries - I've always used X-news as my reader.

I know of Newsbin Pro (and that it's yet more expense) but I know nothing of nzb files. Maybe I should investigate further.

http://www.slyck.com/ng.php?page=9

I respectfully say the if you are lamenting the demise of the pirate bay then the "extra cost" of newsbin pro is surely not that much of an issue

Isnt Pirate Bay back up and running now anyhow?

Yes it is

It spent a couple of days with just a single page message reporting the raid and then claiming (correctly as it seems) that they would be back in a day or two.

In the meantime some naughty boys have been having a pop at the Swedish filth - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5041848.stm tut-tut-tut

Ah, the DoS attack. The cyber version of stealing someone's ball, going and then running away.

Script kiddies

Giganews is the way to go.

I've tried them, and I found them too expensive for my tastes.

Going back to the Piratebay, they've added a little bit to their front page logo. Their pirate ship is lobbing a few canonballs and has sunk a Hollywood sign

You'll notice that its page title is also The Police Bay.

B