Pirate Bay releases Firefox browser to circumvent censorship

PanARMENIAN.Net - To mark its tenth year waging war on copyright, The Pirate Bay has released what it's claiminig is a customized Firefox browser to circumvent censorship, ZDNet reports.

According to The Pirate Bay, its new PirateBrowser bundle helps people bypass "censorship" in certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland.

The file-sharing site has been blacklisted in several European countries through court-ordered ISP-level domain name blocks in recent years, including most recently Ireland and previously the UK. However, fans have quickly been able to circumvent the blocks by accessing the site through proxy servers. The Pirate Bay also responded to UK ISP blocks by using new IP addresses.

"Do you know any people who can't access TPB or other torrents-sites because they are blocked?" The Pirate Bay asks in a blog post announcing the browser bundle for Windows cobbled together with Tor client Vidalia and Firefox Portable Edition configured with the foxyproxy add-on.

"It's a simple one-click browser that circumvents censorship and blockades and makes the site instantly available and accessible. No bundled adware, toolbars or other crap, just a pre-configured Firefox browser," it notes, according to ZDNet.

While the browser does use Tor, The Pirate Bay notes that it does not help people surf the web anonymously.

The browser does however include bookmarks for several filesharing sites besides The Pirate Bay, according to TorrentFreak, including EZTV, KickassTorrents, Bitsnoop and H33T. It also includes Tor-based .onion address for The Pirate Bay and EZTV.

Currently the browser is only for Windows, although according to TorrentFreak, versions for Mac and Linux are in the works.