Steve Ragan over at The Tech Herald reports a most curious situation in this post wherein the attempted closure of The Pirate Bay [don't worry the link is to Wikipedia, not TPB] is having some unintended side effects.
The number of new file-sharing sites hosting pirated copyrighted content skyrocketed over the last three months, according to McAfee’s Q3 Threats Report. The attempted closure of the infamous Pirate Bay site spawned clones and scams as criminals used the hype to spread Malware.
“The attempted shut down of The Pirate Bay led to an explosion of similar sites, many of which are malicious,” said Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications for McAfee Labs. “The sharing of illegal content online has not been quelled by the prosecution of The Pirate Bay founders, whose site was back online within 24 hours.”
Way to go, copyright crusaders. Not only did the attempts to shut down The Pirate Bay fail miserably, but now there are even more sites providing even more dubious services. That would be way more pirated content and way more nasty malware. And these newcomers don’t even have the amusing legal messages and responses pages [again not to worry, the link is to Hip Forums] of the original. Right about now I’m thinking that maybe you would have been better off to just stick with the pirate you know.
The entire McAfee Q3 Threats report may be found here.
