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Insanity aside, Pirate Bay heads to North Korea for sanctuary

The Pirate Bay has seemingly decided to take virtual asylum in North Korea, a country with a tyrannical leader who permits very few civil liberties to those that live there.

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pirate bay

The Pirate Bay has decided to take virtual asylum in North Korea, a country with a tyrannical leader who permits very few civil liberties to those that live there.

The Pirate Bay is an organization with a long history of facing prosecution for its role in helping people commit acts of piracy via torrent files, and it’s not been easy for it to find willing hosts to keep its website online. Last week, Sweden booted the organization from the country. And until recently, the Norwegian Pirate Party had been supplying bandwidth to keep the site running, but it has since caved to legal pressure from several major media companies that were threatening copyright violation lawsuits. However, the site is still up and running, and now we’re hearing who’s allegedly helping out.

Today, Pirate Bay leaders confirmed that North Korea was now being operated/accessed by servers located within North Korea — a move the group calls  “truly an ironic situation.”

The organization also seems to ignore North Korea’s views on personal freedoms. In an official statement, the group writes:

“We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond. We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand.”

The move is interesting because, unlike most of the other countries The Pirate Bay has sought asylum in — North Korea doesn’t have very many friends. World governments don’t like the country for a variety of reasons, with the most glaring issue being its testing of nuclear weapons. Human rights groups don’t like country because of the aforementioned lack of civil liberties and its tyranny its citizens face. And now, it seems Hollywood has a new reason to hate North Korea.

At the same time, the very idea that North Korea would have the resources necessary to host The Pirate Bay is a bit of a stretch. The entire “confirmation” on the organization’s blog could be just another elaborate joke. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Why not get your biggest political opponents (Hollywood) to start targeting a country that has a horrible track record for Internet freedom?

Also, several people have already pointed out that The Pirate Bay is actually being hosted in Germany, but made to look like its coming from North Korea.

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