ThePirateBay is already a popular giant and needs no introduction. It is the most popular torrent-indexing site on the internet, and also one of the sites, most debated upon at the time. The copyright issues against it are now receiving a strong voice from the people. About everywhere there are supports for ThePirateBay. The Pirate Party (PiratPartiet) of Sweden is spreading it's influence all over the world. It aims to create a free Internet, and moderate the copyright laws, all the while preserving the privacy.

I earlier wrote against piracy, but I was never so strongly against it. You can read one of the posts here, which received many comments from the people (Notice that all the comments are supporting piracy... Strange, isn't it?). And now, after extensive mind bend, I am a somewhat moderate supporter of the copyright problem. Yes, the people have the right to share everything they see and do. And it will not be a surprise if The Pirate Party wins in the EU elections. It has gained a massive support from the youth section. It's popularity increases tremendously, daily. Mainly getting support from the extensive campaigning on the Internet, The Pirate Party of Sweden gets ever-increasing support from the young on the Internet. With increasing membership, it has ample chances of making ThePiratebay win the battle against the World.

ThePirateBay, once just a simple torrent-indexing site, has now turned into one of the most intrigued things in the copyright sphere. Voicing the speech of the "common" people [who are affected by the economic depression ;) ], it becomes the real saviour of the people.

But after the entire thing it does is nearly totally piracy, and until some "piracy law" comes up, it will remain convicted to the cell with the label of a crime. But that too might change if The Pirate Party comes to power (See this site of The PiratPartiet (original), and translated in English). It is really appreciable on the part of the people who have achieved such a feat. Making something nearly impossible come true. Cheers to all the dedication of all the supporters of Piracy, who have done such a job, which was nearly impossible.

I even see some "big guys of the internet" supporting piracy. After coming to know that, I nearly totally came to believe that ThePirateBay is going to win the race. Earlier, it got support from just the "common people", but now it is that even the rich people (who can pay for the things, but possibly downloaded pirated movies - but now it wont be a problem, it seems) support the cause of the people, and so, their side is quite heavy.

Though I do not completely wish them to have their victory ( anyone who has done some copyrighted work will agree to me), but I am not a total opposer of them. I have only downloaded a few things from torrents (like Open Suse, Ubuntu, etc), but such a time fires my imagination, when the whole internet will be a safe and free heaven for the people.

I am not a huge torrent downloader myself,
but since I came to know about the popularity of torrents, and about ThePirateBay, I thought to give it a shot. I tried to download Open Suse, the free operating system (just to test- I wanted to do this for a long time). Since it was a big file (4 GB or so), I got a chance to explore things while downloading this. I came to know about many new things. I tried many new clients, and wish to analyse two of them which struck me the most, for others who are unable to determine which client to use. I tried µTorrent and Bitlord (I used others like basic BitTorrent client but liked these two).

Here is what I learned:


µTorrent is truly a miniature client, and very efficient. Bitlord is another great client which gives great download-upload rates.

Now a pointwise comparison between these two:

• µTorrent is a great client, but I found a big defect in it. It does not connect to seeds/peers very slowly. Bitlord connects faster. All the Settings of both the clients were the same, and also the same ports were used.
• µTorrent has another problem- it has no proper peer banning option. The procedure is a bit tedious. Bitlord is very fine in this thing.
• Bitlord has a big file size, while µTorrent is a very small file. It encompasses many features which are proper of a good client.
• BitLord does not support DHT.
• µTorrent does not support NAT traversal.
• BitLord is an Adware.

The most significant problem with µTorrent is that it does not give a high download speed, while Bitlord has got a distinction (in my mind) of giving the highest download speeds.This made me use Bitlord and discard µTorrent as my personal client. Since my bandwith is not very high, I prefer Bitlord, as it provides a high download speed.

So, at the end, I would like to state that personally I like Bitlord better, though the large number of people who use µTorrent tell the popularity of this clients. The people have their own thoughts, and I have mine. I have stated mine, and would like others to suggest their thoughts.

See also, how can every torrent user can evade being caught

Microsoft has a big hand in getting justice done to ThePirateBay. What causes this outrage? Some part of it is because nearly all the microsoft games and softwares are out on ThePirateBay.

Games like Mass Effect, Zoo Tycoon 2, etc have been very popular on Torrent sites. And since these are paid games and softwares, and not free ones, Microsoft is having a really hard time coping up.

But the real problem for Microsoft has been the leaking of Source Codes for many of it's Windows Operating Systems, which are obviously copyrighted by Microsoft and a closely guarded secret. There is possibly an inside man who wants Operating System programming to reach the "Common People who cannot pay for Softwares", and has thus leaked the Codes.

What is more annoying is the hardliner way of ThePirateBay who refused the request of Microsoft and did not take any action in removing or banning the torrent. Their rudeness has and will cost them dear. Many other companies have also requested ThePirateBay to remove the torrents from their Servers, but they, like always, give negative and rude answers.

When a torrent is on one torrent site, it is most probable that other sites too take them on their own servers. It may be the Users or the Moderators, a torrent spreads like a wildfire. But the reason why the people are against ThePirateBay is that all the other sites remove the torrents from their databases when asked to but ThePirateBay does not. If they mind their ways and follow the suit, all will be well with them. They need to mind their ways though.

ThePirateBay owners have been sentenced to one year imprisonment, and intend to move to a higher court for an appeal. But their spirit had been undaunted, and the users of their site have mixed feelings. They are sad, as well as filled with rage. They wish to Boycott the ISP's that log their IP's in the Copyright Infringement battle. There have been 5000 new members of the Swedish Pirate Party just one day after the verdict. The users have placed ThePirateBay at the position of Jesus, with their thought that just four people are taking all the pain for the service of all the pirates out there in the World, who use their site (duh!). Out of revenge, the people have stopped buying even the few original CD's and DVD's they earlier bought. Some of their Arguments are (quite ridiculous):

• Has Wikipedia ever had a trial...? They have giant articles about movies and music too.


• You can not be prosecuted if all you are doing is providing a host site for computers to communicate- is msn to go next?

People are gathering money at many places to help ThePirateBay pay the fines which are so evident to be charged from it. But ThePirateBay owners say that they are not going to pay any fines(can it be?).

The point is that all think ThePirateBay is just a file 'sharing' community, just like a ibrary, where people who cannot pay for things go and download them.

People have created sites like

www.piratpartiet.se (swedish) which has links to all the other pirate parties of the world, so that one can support the fight for a free internet. Many have formed communities on facebook to support the site. ThePirateBay T-Shirts have shot their sales up.

What the people don't understand is that software piracy is really a crime, and it's justification is not admissible.

But even then, the people and ThePirateBay have some chances, as you can read here.

Recently there have been criminal lawsuits against ThePirateBay owners. But their point is that they just opened an index for the people to upload torrents. If one considers it in such a way, they are completely innocent.Well, it is in such a way. ThePirateBay is simply an index of torrents and nothing more, and it's the users who are the real offenders. The Bit Torrent world is completely an anonymous one. ThePirateBay is just one of the few sites indexing torrents.

There are three stages in the Bit Torrent World:The Uploader, the Torrent indexing site and Trackers, and the Downloader. Which one of them is guilty? Well, all of them. But all have ways and excuses for not being guilty.

1. First comes the Uploader of the torrent. He cannot be caught, as he is usually anonymous. There are many sites, like TorrentPrivacy.com that allow anonymous Torrent searching. So, the IP of the Uploader cannot be logged. Moreover, if logged, and an appeal is made to the torrent site, all that it does (if at all it does) is to ban the Uploader' IP address, so that he cannot upload any new torrents. Does that solve the problem? I don't think so.
   
2. Second comes the Torrent indexing sites, and the Trackers. As I already said, they have a point for themselves. They do not do the piracy themselves, but the users of the sites do that.


3. Third, the downloaders, are too, like the uploaders, anonymous, and they cannot even be banned. Many features, like 'Protocol Encryption', and softwares like PeerGuardian, Protowall, etc make detection through ISP's even more difficult.
   There is even an online Bit Torrent applet (only one that I know- if you know any, please let me know), on BitLet.org that lets you copy the torrent metafile url, and lets you download it online (safe if one hides his IP securely). One can even generate a link to the torrent through this site, to use on his blog or website, and the person can safely call it a "Third Party Link" and dismiss any and all charges.

Thus, to detect and catch the Bit Torrent users is becoming more and more difficult, and they are successfully evading threat. Something needs to be done immediately. But instead of practising piracy, the people shall use free, open source softwares.