[Commons-Law] Pirate Bay to add SSL Encryption

[Pranesh Prakash]

Dear All,
I wonder if this amounts to the wilful blindness that was outlawed in the
U.S. P2P court battles.  Would anyone care to hazard a guess?

Cheers,
Pranesh
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http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1691

SSL Encryption Coming to The Pirate Bay
June 22, 2008
Thomas Mennecke

Encryption and file-sharing technology have a long history together. Usenet
servers, LimeWire, uTorrent, and many other applications and protocols have
taken advantage of encryption technology to help give the end user an
additional layer of security. In response to Sweden's new wiretapping law,
The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde has announced the tracker's intention to offer
encryption services to its users.

According to the Local <http://www.thelocal.se/12370.html>, Sweden's
surveillance law, which passed on
Thursday<http://torrentfreak.com/swedes-to-be-wiretapped-despite-protests-080619/>of
this week, allows the government to monitor all incoming and outgoing
transmissions in the name of national security.

Although The Pirate Bay's lobbying efforts against the bill were
unsuccessful, the tracker still has a few cards left to play. According to
Sunde, The Pirate Bay will roll out an encryption option this week.
"Many people have asked me what we're planning to do," Peter writes in his
blog <http://blog.brokep.com/2008/06/22/fra/> "- and the answer is "A lot!".
We're going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law. This week
we're going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We're also going to help out
making a website about easy encryption - both for your hard drives and your
net traffic. As some people know, we're running a system for VPN-tunnels
already and we're going to lower the price for that as well and open it up
for international users as well."

The level of protection offered likely varies on the individual's
geographical location. Since The Pirate Bay isn't (*sic*) actually situated
in Sweden, a user in the United States isn't impacted by the law. However
for the concerned user living in Sweden, the new SSL feature will offer some
security against the perceived threat.

Historically, BitTorrent end users have faced little in the way of legal
repercussions, regardless of their association with a tracker. Despite the
seizure of LokiTorrent and EliteTorrent's userbase information, the only
legal action taken was against the administration. That's not to say that
can't change in Sweden, however history is on the side of the user – and so
is The Pirate Bay. The irony, interestingly enough, is that both The Pirate
Bay and Swedish Government's intentions are in the name of security.
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