The Pirate Bay's regular domain has been unreachable for more than two weeks. Initially, it was unclear what had caused the trouble, but TorrentFreak is informed that it is being caused by a technical problem and that the tech admin is taking this opportunity to rewrite some code. Meanwhile, the .onion address remains accessible through the Tor network.
The Pirate Bay’s main domain has been missing in action for more than two weeks.
As previously reported, ThePirateBay.org displays a Cloudflare error message across the entire site, and some proxies are affected by the downtime as well.
The official Pirate Bay forums remain open but the moderators there don’t know what’s going on either. The site’s operator, ‘Winston,’ appears to operate in his own bubble, without talking directly to TPB staff or the public at large.
This lack of information has caused some uncertainty among regular Pirate Bay users, with some fearing that things may never return to normal.
To find out more we contacted a source who has a direct line with Winston. This person informed us that the downtime is due to a technical issue. In addition, the TPB tech admin is taking the opportunity to rewrite some of the site’s code.
While the response isn’t very detailed, it suggests that everything may eventually return to normal. Our follow-up question asking why the .onion domain has no issues remains unanswered for now.
Another question that comes to mind is why there’s such a massive lack of communication. It shouldn’t be hard to put some kind of message out. However, aside from the response above, we heard nothing further.
In recent years there has been a slow and steady change in the public’s response to Pirate Bay downtime. A few years ago, 24-hours of downtime was a reason for many people to panic, but right now a week of downtime can pass without much fuss.
In the TPB forums, many people point out that the site is still accessible at the new .onion address. New uploads are coming through fine as well, which is important, as many other torrent sites partly rely on content from The Pirate Bay.
That said, recent weeks have shown that TPB is vulnerable, or at least, far from stable. When someone asked if there’s a replacement for ‘Winston’ in case something bad happened, TPB admin Moe answered jokingly.
“There is no replacement for Winston. We do have a Walter sleeping outside the server room who claims he can do the job, but we question his suitability because he seems overly sober,” Moe wrote.
That’s a typical response one can expect from the Pirate Bay crew. However, the question is certainly valid, especially since the true answer is unknown.