Web-based piracy rarely escapes the world's headlines and it's a current topic of discussion in the HEXUS forums where j.o.s.h.1408 declared his shock in discovering a $111 million lawsuit from the MPAA against Torrentspy and Jay asks the question: does piracy force the price of software up?
In keeping with the ongoing growth of online piracy, Alexa, a web information company founded in 1996, has revealed that popular BitTorrent tracker, thepiratebay.org, has become the 97th most visited website on the web.
The Pirate Bay, a Swedish-based site that is no stranger to legal threats, was raided in 2006 by the MPAA and subsequently shut down for a period of three days. Unfortunately for the MPAA, its highly-publicised legal threats led to the site returning to the web with vastly-increased popularity.
The controversial-yet-defiant website states:
"Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organisations will be ridiculed and published at the site."
Now ranked as one of the top 100 most-visited websites, The Pirate Bay is said to attract approximately 25 million unique visitors each month.
