PirateBay.org has been put up for sale at an auction for domain names whose registration was not renewed by their previous owners, on the DropCatch platform. The domain, registered by Piratbyrån, a Swedish laboratory of ideas, in 2004, was the second one created by the founders of The Pirate Bay right after the famous ThePirateBay.org. For a long time, PirateBay.org served as the world's largest and most popular torrent tracker – a site whose visitors download and upload films, music, computer programs, TV shows and books using the BitTorrent protocol.
It is unknown why the previous owners did not want to or could not renew the registration of PirateBay.org. But there is definitely no shortage of those wishing to become its new registrants, with bids reaching $25,000 (the auction ends tomorrow), according to the Domain Gang. It is worth noting that although piracy is illegal, owning a “pirated” domain does not violate any laws by itself. As for why investors are offering big money for this domain name, the most important reason is, obviously, the desire to monetize traffic, since the "flagship" domain ThePirateBay.org continues to serve as the world's largest torrent tracker.
