The Evolution of P2P and Bittorrent

The Pirate Bay Introduces Facebook App

March 30, 2009

Thomas Mennecke

Here’s a development from The Pirate Bay crew that is bound to send shock waves through the entertainment industry. Over the weekend, The Pirate Bay quietly released a new feature that enables direct torrent linking to a user's Facebook profile.

There’s never been anything preventing a torrent link on Facebook, so the concept itself isn’t very earth shattering. However, what’s very interesting is the “share on Facebook” link that now accompanies every torrent listing on The Pirate Bay. In essence, the feature streamlines the placement and formatting of torrent links on one’s Facebook page.

Facebook has a rather strict policy when it comes to posting unauthorized content. If you’re caught posting a copyrighted work, it will be removed, and quite possibly, your account may be suspended. But we’re talking about torrent files and BitTorrent here, a protocol that is slowly becoming accepted as a mainstream avenue of distribution.

And it’s no secret that bands, musicians, and businesses all use Facebook to profile their offerings. It’s also no secret that many bands, musicians and developers enjoy giving their products away for free. So here’s the conundrum – does Facebook take a Gatling gun to The Pirate Bay’s nifty new feature? Or have we entered a brave new world of file distribution that once again marries social networking with file-sharing?