The Pirate Bay is back online. Its new provider turned out to be none less than one in North Korea. This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.
People using The Pirate Bay right now will observe that it’s slightly slower than usual. Earlier today, the Norwegian Pirate Party sent a press release that they no longer supplied bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, as the party’s uplink had caved to threats from the copyright industry about kicking out The Pirate Bay. (This remains a concern in itself.)
Ten minutes after that article was posted, The Pirate Bay came back online with a new provider that was as-yet unidentified. The swarm has worked and discovered the origins of the new provider: North Korea.
This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.
(For the technically interested, the last link in the traceroute chain is 175.45.177.217. A whois lookup will tell you that this is an ISP based in North Korea.)
North Korea may have the one government on this planet which takes pride in asking Hollywood and United States interests to take a hike in the most public way imaginable. Many more governments could do well to learn that particular idea, even if they don’t need to pick up the other things that the NK government is up to.
