Just yesterday, former b-baller and reality TV juggernaut Dennis Rodman arrived stateside after a widely publicized hangout with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying, “I love him. The guy is awesome. He was so honest.” Apparently, Kim’s generosity extends to torrenting sites as well.
As of this morning, notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has been offered virtual asylum in North Korea after being kicked out of Norway, according to the site’s most recent blog post.
Having lost its hosting from the Swedish Pirate Party last week, The Pirate Bay jumped to pirate parties in Norway and Catalonia. That brief relationship ended this morning, when the Norwegian Pirate Party ousted the file sharing site as well, with party leader Geir Asalid claiming that party doesn’t have the economic muscle necessary to fight for the right to torrent.
After some very brief downtime, the site popped back up, though at the same address and with no indication of the new hosting location until a traceroute for the site was tracked back to an ISP located in the Potong-gang District of Pyongyang, North Korea. Following a handful of initial reports, The Pirate Bay posted its blog post acknowledging the switchover.
Is The Pirate Bay Messing With Us?
It’s not always easy to believe what The Pirate Bay says. If this turns out to be a joke, it wouldn’t the first time The Pirate Bay has pulled such a hoax about its virtual whereabouts. In 2007, the site pulled an April Fool’s Day joke revolving around this exact situation, writing at the time, ”We would like to thank Kim Jong-Il for the opportunity and we would like all of our users to review their current feelings towards this great nation!”
This time around, a number of colluding circumstances make this announcement sound considerably more legitimate. Not only has The Pirate Bay switched out its homepage image (seen above), but the ISP is in fact being traced to North Korea only hours after the Norwegian Pirate Party’s announcement was released. It it is a hoax, this would certainly be an elaborate one.
Those within the torrent news network also seem to believe the situation – to a degree. “A Pirate Bay insider informs TorrentFreak that they had been working for a while to get connectivity in North Korea,” reports TorrentFreak. “We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country…TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now,” the source went on to say.
Hosting the winner of 2004′s Celebrity Mole and the first ever Hulk Hogan’s Championship Wrestling Tournament (aka Mr. Rodman) and wining and dining him as if he were an ambassador is one thing. But putting the actions of your country’s Internet network in direct opposition to the fierce lobbying efforts of Hollywood and the United States copyright police is an entirely different kind of political taunt. It likely doesn’t bode well for the increasingly precarious relationship between the U.S. and North Korea.
For those not inclined to travel to the site’s blog, you can read an excerpt from The Pirate Bay below:
This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing [sic] a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.
Top image courtesy of The Pirate Bay. Second image courtesy of TorrentFreak.
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