
Infamous piracy web site The Pirate Bay taken offline by Swedish police rises from the ashes like a phoenix (and with a phoenix as a logo and a timer counting down to 1 February).
The Pirate Bay’s revival seems possible after the web site’s posting an image of phoenix which the torrent used last time in 2006 when the site went offline after police raid in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, the Pirate Bay was relaunched and went online for a short period of time. The logo was used to compare it with a phoenix that rises from the ashes. The date is still not confirmed but the site’s timer is counting down to 1 February. Last week, when the timer was unveiled, the web site appeared revitalized but still not working.
The Pirate Bay has been closed due to piracy reasons a lot of times but the team behind the site always managed to keep it online by changing the domains. In 2009, the site’s creators were sentenced to one year in prison for copyright violations, but the torrent was still working.
In early December, after the raid on the site’s servers, The Pirate Bay was unavailable during several weeks. Just a few days after The Pirate Bay raid, the team behind Isohunt.to launched a temporary replacement called Oldpiratebay.org which is quite popular but still hasn’t a lot of features the Pirate Bay had. For example, users cannot access their downloads and there’s no upload feature.
“In order to boost that process we are announcing an unprecedented move,” claims Isohunt.to.
“$100,000 for developing OldPirateBay.org, are you ready for that?! Anyone can take part in the website development and moderation which will result in public recognition. Also addition to your pay check would be a nice surprise,” they also add.
Starting next month, cash prizes, paid in Bitcoin, will be shared through a contest among the developers who contribute to the top features.
The site as a temporary replacement will be online if the Pirate Bay does indeed return soon. It’s interesting because OldPirateBay already outranks the original site in Google’s search engine.
OldPirateBay’s team say that the users have to decide the fate of the site.
“The main idea is that community should develop the site in the way they want. So if there will be enough initiative the site will be developed by people. We just want to stimulate it,” Isohunt.to concludes.
A member of the site’s team under the pseudonym “Mr 101001000000 ” says that if the infamous torrent return indeed, it would be “with a bang.”
The contest details will be accessible on the OldPirateBay.org later this week.