Torrent websites have become the most common way for users across the world to access pirated content in a peer to peer fashion. While the technology has boomed in the last few years, Governments across the world have attempted to shut down these websites for hosting copyright content. Maintaining servers and retaining databases of magnet links is not cheap and revenue from advertisement doesn’t seem to compensate for the operating costs of these services. Taking advantage of the crypto boom, torrent websites seem to have taken up web mining as a possible source of revenue. The first to lead this movement is none other than The Pirate Bay; one of the oldest and most popular torrent websites. It is hosted by the Swedish internet provider PeRiQuito and provides access to torrents in a safe and user-friendly way.
Recently, users of Pirate Bay reported noticeable changes in computer speed while visiting the site. According to these reports, there is a significant increase in processor usage when browsing certain pages of their website. A Reddit user mentioned that all CPU threads increased over 80 percent; but only occurs when he carries out encoding activities.
The Pirate Bay operators understood the cause of confusion and revealed that the core team has been investigating new sources of revenue through their website. The previous methods of generating income included anonymous Bitcoin donations and revenue derived from advertisements. According to the operators, these donations and advertisement revenues may not be enough to ensure the smooth operation of the website. They further assert that the purpose of conducting the experiment is to discover a possible and more efficient way of securing income. The group suggests that if the tests yield positive results, the new method will become an effective tool that would greatly contribute to the general transformation of the website.
In effect, the team embedded some code in the website that is responsible for the changes that users experienced. Experts revealed that the code was a Bitcoin miner that was tucked away in the site’s footer and was provided by Coinhive. A web miner typically mines small amounts of cryptocurrencies such as Monero when users visit the website. These cryptocurrencies are typically CPU mineable and require far fewer resources to mine than Bitcoin or Ethereum.
According to the official statement, the miner is hidden in the search results and category listings, not on the home page or individual torrent pages. It has also been restricted to run in only one tab, irrespective of the total number of tabs that are available. Although the people who regularly visit the website are not comfortable with the idea, the moderators promised that the test would be conducted for a very short period of time. According to the Pirate Bay forum administrator, Sid, users are also reminded that the mining applet can be removed. He noted that this JavaScript mining can be blocked through browser settings or add-ons such as No Script. Social media users suggest that apart from No Script, add-ons such as Script Block or Script Safe can also disable the JavaScript in web browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.
The team has allowed people to voice their opinion on the forum as to whether they should continue to use the advertisements or fully integrate the web miner into their website. A few CPU cycles is probably the trade-off one will have to make in the future for free content from websites like Pirate Bay.
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