The founders of widely used BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay are getting ready to launch IPREDator, a network service that makes people online more anonymous by using a VPN (virtual private network).
The service is set to launch before April 1. It will be priced at about €5 (US$7) per month, and to protect users, no data or logs will be saved, according to the service’s Web site.
The choice of name and launch date is no coincidence. On April 1 Sweden will get a new law that will make it easier for copyright holders to go after file sharers.
The law is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), hence the name of the service. IPRED will make it possible for copyright holders to get a court order requesting ISPs to provide IP (Internet Protocol) addresses linked to computers and users who have downloaded their content.
The law takes surveillance on the Internet one step too far, according to Peter Sunde, spokesman for The Pirate Bay and one of the site co-founders currently on trial for copyright-infringement related offenses. The Pirate Bay serves up torrent files — comprising the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol — for download.
IPREDator is looking to support as many VPN clients as possible, and the service will be available to Internet users all over the world, according to Sunde. But in the end it doesn’t matter whether users use IPREDator or another similar service, as long as they protect themselves, Sunde said.