In the world of online piracy there are few names as recognized and trusted as The Pirate Bay, which is why most people wouldn’t think twice when they noticed the tracker.thepiratebay.org announce address. However, The Pirate Bay killed off the tracker more than five years ago, so why are people still seeing it? The answer is quite simple: the Chinese.
On November 2009 The Pirate Bay announced that it would shut down its tracker for good. Trackers were outdated according to the site’s owners. Instead, they encouraged BitTorrent users to rely on DHT, PEX and other trackerless technologies. Despite the fact that the tracker is no longer functional, many old and some new torrents still include the tracker.thepiratebay.org announce address. While the tracker hasn’t responded to these calls for five years, for some server admins it has now risen from the dead. Starting early January hundreds of websites have been plagued by traffic from China. While the exact reason remains unclear, it appears that the Great Firewall of China may be in part causing the problems.
