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Pirate Bay keelhauled by Windows Live Messenger

by Mark Tyson on 28 March 2012, 12:46

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), The Pirate Bay

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Microsoft has confirmed that links from the Pirate Bay website are now being blocked within Windows Live Messenger.

This latest move by the software giant is under the guise of protecting users from unsafe content and malware. Microsoft said that it also blocks URLs from other domains that its algorithms say contain spam or malicious material. However, countless other similar torrent site URLs still work within the popular messaging program.

Pirate Bay is the most (in)famous torrent distribution site and has had many high profile run-ins with major software, music and film companies because the files distributed on the site allow users to download copyrighted content from the internet cloud. Pirate Bay technically hosts no copyrighted files, but instead provides torrents that point to files that are shared elsewhere.

The Swedish website actually pokes fun at the long list of legal threats received, which is an interesting read, alongside the site's replies. As the biggest name in torrents Pirate Bay has a big target on its back for media and software companies and governments to aim at. Its predecessors have come and gone, like Suprnova and Mininova, but Pirate Bay has somewhat surprisingly been more resilient to closure attempts, a lot of which is due to Sweden's freedom of expression values.

piratebay logo

This week's Microsoft snub is just one of many setbacks for Pirate Bay whose hosting company has, earlier this month, been contacted by the Swedish legal authorities to give information on the people behind the organisation.

Here in the UK the High Court has ruled that the Pirate Bay facilitates copyright infringement and in June is expected to decide whether they will ask ISPs to block the site.



HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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Just had a bit of a read through their legal section. Gave me a bit of a lunchtime chuckle at least.
I've noticed quite a lot of links (all innocent) being blocked between me and friends, but I'm using Pidgin. Maybe this has something to do with it? Last one I remember is BF battlelog, I had to replace a dot with a space so it wasn't auto-linked but that also goes to show how stupid this is; it just causes problems (bad heuristics?) and is laughably easy to circumvent.
MSN messenger is already dead. Just one more nail to the coffin
I still prefer plain+simple IM over ‘social networking’ stuff. Not necessarily MSNM, but it is what most people I know use.
OilSheikh
MSN messenger is already dead. Just one more nail to the coffin

Didn't think anyone used it any more.