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The Pirate Bay has long been seen as the leader in the provision of links to torrent files to download your favorite media, software, and so on. Using TPB might not be the best idea, and here are 7 reasons why…as well as the solution for obtaining your favorite torrents.

1. It’s Not Always There

Sometimes, without warning, you can head on over to The Pirate Bay domain name and find that it isn’t there. There might be a notice there instead, or it just seems to take forever to respond. The reasons for this can be many and varied, and it is often just a case of waiting for the issue to be resolved.

why piratebay is down

The most common reason is that the server location is in the process of being moved. This involves a record system known as DNS being updated – DNS turns the text-based address you type into your browser into an IP address that can be connected to via the browser.

There are many DNS servers all over the world, and when one is notified of a change, it passes the information on to all the others. This happens by the first server informing its neighbors, who in turn inform their neighbors, and so on, eventually reaching every server.

If you were able to connect from different locations around the world, you’d find that in some places you could connect immediately (as the DNS servers were up to date) and others wouldn’t connect at all (the DNS servers were pointing to the old location).

2. It’s Slow

In our always-connected world, we love speed. The faster a website loads, the better. You may find that when you try and visit TPB it takes a long time to load up. This isn’t the same problem as the DNS pointing to the wrong place – that would prevent the site from loading altogether. In this instance, it just takes a very long time to get anything useful on-screen.

There are a few reasons that this could happen. The most common is that traffic is very heavy on the site (for which there isn’t much you can do to solve it other than wait), that traffic is having a hard time finding a route to the site (there may be servers that are down or heavy traffic on other sites that is slowing the connection down) or that your connection has been throttled in some way.

piratebay torrenting

Connections to particular sites are sometimes speed limited by your ISP. The given reason for this is that certain sites lead to greater data use, and rather than allow one person to use the whole bandwidth the ISP has available they choose to limit the speed of your connection to give others a fair chance.

Whether this is necessary or not is up for debate, but they can only do this if they recognize the sites and/or types of data you are transferring.
You might consider getting around this problem by searching for “thepiratebay mirrors” to find sites that contain the same content as The Pirate Bay, or by using a Pirate Bay proxy.

Unfortunately, bandwidth throttling can still occur even if you are using a mirror or a proxy, as the data still passes directly through your ISP. We recommend using a VPN service while torrenting to protect your IP.

3. Other Sites are Available

Of course, even if you can’t access The Pirate Bay, alternatives are around. Some of the well-known sites will often face problems in the same way that TPB does, including changing server location and bandwidth throttling. Using an alternative source isn’t viable if it encounters the same problems as the original!

However, you don’t have to use The Pirate Bay to get your torrent fix. Other torrent networks exist and offer plenty of choices, so investigating them is a good idea. And sometimes the results are better than The Pirate Bay.

4. Torrents Aren’t Always What They Say They Are

The content available through The Pirate Bay is not curated. Users can offer their opinion on whether the content of a torrent is what it says it is, but no matter what, the results will still appear in the search.

This can lead to abuse of the system. If you’re looking for something that has suddenly become very popular, for example, a recent release, it is simple enough for someone to rename a file and provide it under the pretense that it is something else. In the case of video files, you might just get the wrong video. If it is a program that you’ve downloaded, it could be infected with malware or a virus which could lead to bigger problems than you anticipated.

Some of the alternatives to TPB use a curation system that ensures suspect torrents are removed from their database. This makes them more secure to use and helps to prevent wasting your time and bandwidth.

5. You’re Blocked From Accessing It

There are a number of people who would like to stop you accessing The Pirate Bay altogether. These include people in the movie, music, and software industries who have put pressure on governments and enforcement agencies to block TPB.

Because of this, in some jurisdictions, The Pirate Bay is geo-blocked – you can’t access the site because your IP address shows what country you are in, and your web traffic is filtered to prevent access. This might sound like something that only happens in China or North Korea, but even countries like the UK and Germany employ this technology to stop the public from accessing certain resources.

is the pirate bay down

With the vast number of torrent sites available, this is not the best strategy for the enforcement agencies to use. Just because they have blocked a particular domain name, or strings that include “pirate bay”, it doesn’t stop you accessing a site with a completely different name.
So even when TPB is blocked like this, you can still easily access other networks.

In a similar fashion, many corporate networks are locked down in this way – by preventing access to particular domain names, IP address, or filtering strings in domain names. If your business prevents you from accessing TPB, you can easily find alternatives to use instead.

6. Direct Downloads are the Way Forward

So, if The Pirate Bay is slow, you can’t find the domain, you’re blocked from accessing it, and you’re struggling to find a reputable torrent site, what else can you do? Look for a direct download instead!

thepiratebay alternative

Direct downloads will often transfer much more quickly than torrent files as you have a direct connection to the source file. There is less chance of the domain being blocked, and once you’ve found the file you need you can get to it straight away without waiting for other users to obtain chunks of it.

There are still risks present of files being misnamed and containing malware, but this makes the direct download option no better and no worse than The Pirate Bay. Due to the size of the files you may download, your connection may once again be subject to bandwidth throttling, but again this equates to the situation when using TPB.

7. You Might Face Legal Problems

he most pressing concern when using The Pirate Bay is the potential for facing legal problems due to accessing the content. There are a lot of other options for downloading media and other forms of content from all over the internet, but none is monitored so closely as TPB.

is piratebay legal

Because the name is so well-known, the site attracts new visitors all the time. Seasoned downloaders will keep returning, but new downloaders will have heard of the site as it has been around for over 15 years and has rightfully built a reputation for itself.

Accessing the site is not strictly speaking illegal, nor is downloading a torrent file. However, if you have downloaded a torrent file, you essentially have the key to the door to download whatever is referenced in the file. You’ve not illegally accessed copyrighted material, but you now have the means to download it and have shown intent by searching for and obtaining the torrent.

In some jurisdictions, this is more than enough to begin a legal case against you, and some ISPs may be forced to reveal information that links your IP address to your identity.

The idea behind this is to make an example of people to help dissuade others from taking the same course of action – it can be argued that the sentences imposed for those found guilty of downloading and distributing copyrighted material are disproportionate, but that is a matter to be discussed in the courts. The fact of the matter is that if you are prosecuted under copyright-related laws, you are unlikely to get off lightly.

Using sites other than The Pirate Bay will lower this risk, as they are not so well watched (if at all). This does not provide an excuse for accessing copyrighted material but does give a reason to avoid TPB altogether.

Solution: Safe High-Speed Torrent Downloading

To access The Pirate Bay in a safe and high-speed manner, the use of a VPN is highly recommended. In tests, NordVPN has consistently shown to be the top VPN available for both security and speed. But how can a VPN help to access TPB?

A VPN works by creating a secure encrypted link between your computer and a remote server. Any browsing or downloading you do is first routed through this secure server via the encrypted link.

how vpn works

NordVPN has servers located in multiple countries around the world, and you can select the most appropriate one to use – this can help if you’ve encountered slow DNS propagation, as you can connect to The Pirate Bay via an already-updated DNS server.

best vpn for torrenting

As the transmitted data is encrypted, your ISP will have a hard time identifying exactly what it is that is being sent and received, thereby reducing the chance of having your connection throttled. The encryption also disguises the sites you are visiting, so they won’t be able to throttle you based on the domain names you visit.

In the case of being geo-blocked, you simply need to connect to a NordVPN server in a different country that doesn’t suffer from geo-blocking. The traffic from your computer will appear as if it is coming directly from the VPN server, no matter what your physical location is.

piratebay mirrorsAnd finally, using a VPN with strong encryption – NordVPN uses military-grade encryption with 256-bit keys which could potentially take the highest-powered computer millions of years to brute-force crack – will keep your identity private and stop snoopers from seeing what you are doing. If you don’t want to face any legal ramifications from visiting a site that may give you unauthorized access to copyrighted material, you need to use the best encryption possible.

Your IP address cannot be identified as having visited a particular site through this encryption – the most that could be shown was that you connected to a VPN, which is perfectly legal. VPNs are often used in the business world to connect to business locations together seamlessly and securely, prevent outside access to sensitive data while allowing employees to easily work with colleagues around the world.

While your ISP cannot track you through a VPN, it is true that some VPN services keep logs of what sites users have accessed through the VPN. NordVPN is not one of them and all user data is kept private.the pirate bay proxy

Other VPN services are available, but for speed and security, it’s hard to beat NordVPN. More importantly, the VPN service can be configured at router level, meaning that every device on your WiFi network can use the same protection too as all your traffic passes through your router.

Very few VPN services allow this level of protection and accessibility as many need an app on your device to work – with your router set up to access the VPN, per-device apps are not necessary. This truly makes NordVPN a desirable solution when you are looking for safe, high-speed torrent downloading.