 | |
| Initial release | 10 August 2013 |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 0.8 (9.0.9) / 13 April 2020 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| License | Open source |
| Website | The Pirate Bay: piratebrowser Team-LiL: Pirate Tor Browser |
PirateBrowser is an Internet browser by The Pirate Bay used to circumvent Internet censorship.
PirateBrowser was released on 10 August 2013 on the tenth anniversary of The Pirate Bay. [2] It is a bundle of Firefox Portable 23, the FoxyProxy addon for Firefox, and the Vidalia Tor client with some proxy configurations to speed up page loading. According to TorrentFreak it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times in its first three days, [3] 1,000,000 times by October 2013, 2,500,000 times by 6 January 2014, and 5,000,000 times by 16 May 2014. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
"It's not providing anonymity and it's not secure to hide your identity. PirateBrowser is only supposed to circumvent censoring and website blocking. If we made the browser fully anonymous it would only slow down browsing" [3] [9]
piratebrowser.com [10] [2] was suspended around December 2015. [1]
The browser circumvents site-blocking in countries including, according to the Pirate Bay Web site, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iran, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, North Korea and the United Kingdom. This allows users to access some websites otherwise blocked, usually by government ban or threat of legal action, by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in these countries.
"The goal is to create a browser-like client to circumvent censorship, including domain blocking, domain confiscation, IP-blocking. This will be accomplished by sharing all of a site’s indexed data as P2P downloadable packages, that are then browsed/rendered locally" [11]
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
Sweden's internet usage in 2022 was 96%, higher than the European Union (EU) average of 89%. This contributes to Sweden's digital skills development, with 67% of Swedes possessing basic digital skills, compared to the EU's 54%. Additionally, 36% of Swedes have above-basic digital skills and 77% have basic digital content creation skills, exceeding the EU averages of 26% and 66%, respectively. Codeweek 2022 in Sweden also demonstrated gender inclusivity, with a female participation rate of 51%.
The use of the BitTorrent protocol for the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content generated a variety of novel legal issues. While the technology and related platforms are legal in many jurisdictions, law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are attempting to address this avenue of copyright infringement. Notably, the use of BitTorrent in connection with copyrighted material may make the issuers of the BitTorrent file, link or metadata liable as an infringing party under some copyright laws. Similarly, the use of BitTorrent to procure illegal materials could potentially create liability for end users as an accomplice.
TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights.
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard is a 2013 Swedish documentary film directed and produced by Simon Klose. It focuses on the lives of the three founders of The Pirate Bay – Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm – and the Pirate Bay trial. Filming began sometime in 2008, and concluded on 28 February 2012.
KickassTorrents was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.
This is a list on countries where at least one internet service provider (ISP) formerly or currently censors the popular file sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB).
Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player. The application provides a piracy-based alternative to subscription-based video streaming services such as Netflix. Popcorn Time uses sequential downloading to stream video listed by several torrent websites, and third-party trackers can also be added manually. The legality of the software depends on the jurisdiction.
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a unit of the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud. It was established in 2013 with the responsibility to investigate and deter serious and organised intellectual property crime in the United Kingdom.
Nyaa Torrents is a BitTorrent website focused on East Asian media. It is one of the largest public anime-dedicated torrent indexes.
RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.
Library Genesis (LibGen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere. LibGen describes itself as a "links aggregator", providing a searchable database of items "collected from publicly available public Internet resources" as well as files uploaded "from users".
Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls. The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day. In addition to its intensive use, Sci-Hub stands out among other shadow libraries because of its easy use/reliability and because of the enormous size of its collection: a 2018 study estimated that Sci-Hub provided access to 95% of all scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers, and on 15 July 2022 Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprises 88,343,822 files.
1337x is an online website that provides a directory of torrent files and magnet links used for peer-to-peer file sharing through the BitTorrent protocol. According to the TorrentFreak news blog, 1337x is the second-most popular torrent website as of 2023.
YIFY Torrents or YTS was a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their small file size, which attracted many downloaders.
Z-Library is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic texts and general-interest books. It began as a mirror of Library Genesis, but has since expanded dramatically.
FitGirl Repacks is a website distributing pirated video games. FitGirl Repacks is known for "repacking" games – compressing them significantly so they can be downloaded and shared more efficiently. TorrentFreak listed FitGirl Repacks at sixth in 2021 and at ninth in 2020's Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites lists.
Anna's Archive is a search engine for shadow libraries. It was founded by the Pirate Library Mirror, a team of anonymous archivists, in direct response to law enforcement efforts to close down Z-Library in 2022. It describes itself as a project that aims to "catalog all the books in existence" and to "track humanity's progress toward making all these books easily available in digital form".
This domain name has been suspended...This domain name is pending ICANN verification and has been suspended. If you are the owner of this domain you can reactivate this domain by logging into your EuroDNS account.
However, on its 10th anniversary they are now releasing a special "PirateBrowser" which effectively bypasses any ISP blockade.
Do you know any people who can't access TPB or other torrents-sites because they are blocked? Recommend PirateBrowser to them. It's a simple one-click browser that circumvents censorship and blockades and makes the site instantly available and accessible. No bundled ad-ware, toolbars or other crap, just a Pre-configured Firefox browser. A nice present to TPB and our users on this day, our 10yr birthday!