The Pirate Bay angry about being pirated

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, I did indeed read it. They are whining that other people are using their "intellectual property" (logo, etc). Are you saying that it's "worse" to use someone's logo than to engage in massive copyright infringement?

No they aren't whining about it. From the article (emphasis mine):

“This site is a bad copy of other sites, like TPB, and it’s totally meaningless,” The Pirate Bay told the blog TorrentFreak.

The proxies do indeed violate TPB’s intellectual property in several ways. Passing off is a trademark violation, even if a trademark hasn’t been registered. Using The Pirate Bay logo or font is a trademark violation, as is using the piratebay.ee domain. TPB hasn’t called in the intellectual property lawyers – although it could clearly benefit from the strong legal protections available to it.

Originally Posted by plib

They're not worried about other sites using pay to download, nor are they worried about TPB proxies, just that pay to download proxies are using fake TPB proxies to charge. There's an article about it on Torrentfreak and a comment about it on the TPB blog which makes their attitude clear. I think the original article got hold of the wrong end of the stick and now it's being flailed around incorrectly.

It looks like they are taking care of the problem:

The TPB crew say they have “re-hijacked” visitors to one and are now directing them back to their official blog. Furthermore, ThePirateBay.ee appears to have been visited by a pirate David Blaine who has made all ‘their’ content disappear.

[HansTWN]

The Pirate Bay is not worried about people getting tricked or scammed (if they are, do they virus check the links??), they are worried their precious ad revenue goes down.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Is their logo trademarked?

Last I heard it was owned by a clothing manufacturer who were planning to branch out into USB memory sticks.

[plib]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

The Pirate Bay is not worried about people getting tricked or scammed (if they are, do they virus check the links??), they are worried their precious ad revenue goes down.

Who on earth sees internet advertising any more?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by plib

Who on earth sees internet advertising any more?

At least TPB is getting paid for placing the ads. Now, I didn't say that anybody actually looked at them or didn't have an ad-blocker...

[plib]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

At least TPB is getting paid for placing the ads. Now, I didn't say that anybody actually looked at them or didn't have an ad-blocker...

Well, if companies are silly enough to pay to just place ads and not for click throughs then good luck to the TPB. Darwinism in action!

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by plib

Well, if companies are silly enough to pay to just place ads and not for click throughs then good luck to the TPB. Darwinism in action!

Well, perhaps TPB's staff spends most of their day just clicking on the ads to drive up the click-through numbers? Certainly would fit the spirit of their website.

[plib]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Well, perhaps TPB's staff spends most of their day just clicking on the ads to drive up the click-through numbers? Certainly would fit the spirit of their website.

There are bots for that which, if that's what they want to do, I'm sure they could download from a torrent somewhere!

[Kali Yuga]

I for one find this highly ironic.

That said, I wouldn't classify it as hypocritical unless they start legal action.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

The Pirate Bay is not worried about people getting tricked or scammed (if they are, do they virus check the links??), they are worried their precious ad revenue goes down.

I'm guessing it's both.

Then again, if your goal is to get or grant access to Free Stuff without any regard for the content creators, my sympathies are limited.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

At least TPB is getting paid for placing the ads. Now, I didn't say that anybody actually looked at them or didn't have an ad-blocker...

Most folks that participate in on-line forums (such as us) have a far better understanding of the tools and resources available in making the surf experience less annoying; Adblock being one of many.

You'd think those that visit sites like TPB do too, since they were bright enough to download and install the torrent software. But probably not.

I'm always amazed at how many folks, especially old[er] folks, don't have a clue what a browser really is, much less what add-on is.

Q. What kind of computer do you have?
A. Microsoft 5

Q. What browser are you using?
A. Word 2007

Q. Is your internet connection up?
A. I see my little pictures.

Q. What antivirus do you use?
A. Google.

Q. Push the start button.
A. Okay. It's off.

several minutes later.

Q. What do you see in the bottom left corner of your computer screen.
A. Nothing.

Q. err...umm...what do you see in the upper left of your computer screen.
A. It's a little picture of an Apple.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

The Pirate Bay is not worried about people getting tricked or scammed (if they are, do they virus check the links??), they are worried their precious ad revenue goes down.

I'm not disagreeing with you that TPB is worried about ad revenue, but...

Given the volume of material that the site links to, it would be impossible for them to download and check every file for viruses in a timely fashion, and that doesn't even get into the increased legal risk they would incur in downloading all of the material. That's not to say though that they don't have protections in place; The Pirate Bay effectively crowd sources file checking. The site is setup so users can post in comments on a link's page and click the equivalent of a "like" button to indicate that a file is legit; plus the very nature of bit torrent means that legit files will be seeded more than virus laden traps. For a file with lots of downloads, it's easy for a would-be pirate to tell if the link they're clicking on is the actual file.

[RainingLemur]

Arrr. They be using my logo.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

The Pirate Bay effectively crowd sources file checking....

A file could be distributed thousands of times before getting tagged. There's no guarantee that everyone who downloads the file has the latest AV and/or will report malware.

Still, I don't think torrents are a big vector for viruses. A more likely culprit these days would be an infected ad, and even Google misses that on occasion. I.e. Pirate Bay isn't any more or less likely than any other site to distribute a virus.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

I wasn't saying that --but I will if you like. I consider fraud as worse than infringement.

Fraud is ripping off the a consumer. Infringement is ripping off an author. I guess it depends on whose ox is being gored.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

A file could be distributed thousands of times before getting tagged. There's no guarantee that everyone who downloads the file has the latest AV and/or will report malware.

Still, I don't think torrents are a big vector for viruses. A more likely culprit these days would be an infected ad, and even Google misses that on occasion. I.e. Pirate Bay isn't any more or less likely than any other site to distribute a virus.

Quite right, a file could be downloaded a thousand times before one person tags it. But it would still get tagged far faster than if TPB tried to download and tag every file themselves.