The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content , founded in 2003, where visitors can search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing. (Photo : YouTube/ReviewTechUSA)
The Pirate Bay remains the King of Torrents even in the realm of music piracy, this according to a new report issued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Up to 47 active torrenting sites have been identified in the same report and as expected TPB and the so-called best Kickass Torrents and Torrentz.eu alternatives figured prominently.
In its submission before the U.S. government, the RIAA listed the sources of pirated music in five groups namely the stream-ripping sites, search-and-download sites, cyberlockers, unlicensed pay-for-download sites and the BitTorrent sites. But it is the latter that dominated the RIAA report as the music industry group indicated that it's becoming increasingly difficult to clamp down on the illegal operations.
The report, according to TorrentFreak, has admitted that tracking and taking down free music download or streaming sites proved even harder than before no thanks to numerous obstructing factors. For one, the sites mentioned are all domain hopping, which is an operational tactic utilized by TPB to protect its existence. It appeared that most if not all torrenting sites have adopted the same measure.
The RIAA reported too that music pirates are largely operating anonymously like using fake or incomplete domain registrant information, thus making it even more difficult to track and take them down.
But what is proving as the file-sharing sites' best form of shield against rights holders and authorities is the use of reverse proxy services such as the kind provided by CDN firm Cloudflare. "BitTorrent sites, like many other pirate sites, are increasingly turning to Cloudflare because routing their site through Cloudflare obfuscates the IP address of the actual hosting provider, masking the location of the site," TorrentFreak reported the RIAA as saying.
It is believed that Cloudflare is servicing the operational needs of top torrenting sites and chief of them are The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent. Like the MPAA before it, the RIAA singled out the two operations as the top destination for users looking to stream or download free music. In an earlier report, the MPAA said that TPB and other torrenting sites saw significant increase on their traffic following the demise of Kickass Torrents and meta-search engine Torrentz.eu.
Essentially, the MPAA labeled The Pirate Bay and company as the best KAT and Torrentz alternatives that lure in millions of torrent fans every day. And on its report, the RIAA somehow affirmed with its own list that also includes the MPAA's usual suspects and they are the following:
- Thepiratebay.org
- Extratorrent.cc
- Bitsnoop.com
- Isohunt.to
- Torrentdownloads.me
- LimeTorrents.cc
- Rarbg.to
- 1337x.to
