After more than a month of downtime, The Pirate Bay’s .org domain started working again recently.
This was good news for the site’s millions of users, but the comeback has resulted in some frustrations as well.
As previously reported, the site’s operator – also known as Winston – used the downtime to rewrite some code. While these changes appear to be minimal at first sight, the site’s usability hasn’t improved. Some even wonder whether something had gone horribly wrong.
One of the most frequently reported issues is that torrents appear to be missing. This isn’t immediately obvious to a casual visitor, but the more demanding ones can’t seem to find everything they’re looking for.
The Pirate Bay has changed the way search results are pulled from the database. This now goes through an API hosted at Bayapi.org. This API doesn’t always return full results. In fact, there seems to be a limit of a hundred results, presented on a single page.
This restriction is fine when someone’s looking for a very specific torrent, but not for broader searches.
The same limits also apply to the site’s general navigation across categories. The software, video, and audio sections all show just one page. There is no option to browse through more pages.
The good news for Pirate Bay users is that all torrent links are still in the database, as far as we can see. However, they may be required to use more targeted search phrases to find what they’re looking for.
Although casual browsing through various pages of results is no longer possible, there is a partial workaround though, as pointed out in the Pirate Bay forums. Users can find the next pages in the category results by adding :1, :2 or even :99. That trick doesn’t appear to work for regular searches, however.
Other stuff remains missing as well if we compare the new homepage with the old one, shown below.
A quick glance shows that the official blog has disappeared, for example. The ‘doodle’ page has gone too, and the same is true for the RSS feeds, the usage policy, the daily dumps, and the famous “How do I download” explainer.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the Kopimi icon – one of Pirate Bay’s hallmarks – is no longer featured either.
All the changes, including a domain Whois update where the registrant is now hidden, have fueled conspiracy theories. These originate from a small minority and speculate that The Pirate Bay has changed owners, or that something more nefarious is going on.
We have been no proof that this is the case. A more likely scenario, in our opinion, is that the code changes were implemented without proper testing and care. And that they serve a technical need, rather than an increased user experience.
That theory is just a theory of course, but it’s no secret that the full attention of the operator may not be with the site. After all, user registrations have also been closed for almost a year, a measure that was taken to patch a technical problem.
TorrentFreak spoke to a staffer who admits that not everything is functioning as it should. However, they can’t do much either and have to wait until “Winston” springs into action. That could take a few days, or weeks, or…
