A report by internet security software company McAfee has said that whilst attempts are made to shut down well known illegal file-sharing websites, the action simply causes more to be created. Talking as action was taken in Sweden to shut Pirate Bay down, McAfee said that new sites which shared data for copyright content had increased by 300per cent.
Hosting a vast number of links to copyrighted movies, TV shows and music, Pirate Bay was ordered to be shut down in August after a high profile court case in Sweden. However, whilst the proceedings were underway, users of the site began to establish new sites with the links from Pirate Bay, with the illegal file-sharer itself opening the code to nearly 2million links so that new websites could use the data.
Reporting on the data, McAfee said “The Pirate Bay example shows how difficult it is to ‘stop’ data once it is on the web. Although a website can be shut down, anyone who has accessed the content (pictures, games, text, movies, etc) may still have some and be able to redistribute it. Plus, once traffic was shut down, the site quickly relocated and was operational again reportedly within 24 hours.”
Ahead of next month when Business Secretary Peter Mandelson plans to bring in a new bill including sanctions to deal with file-sharing sites, McAfee warned that most hosts wanted users to download content because it contained malicious software.
