The Video Bay: Pirate Bay’s YouTube Competitor

About two years ago, the makers of the ever-popular torrent website, thepiratebay.org, announced that they were working on a new project called “The Video Bay”.

A few weeks ago, The Video Bay opened up a test version to the public.  The public trial has since been disabled, but the site is still up.  Currently, anyone can view demos of either their audio or video service.

The Video Bay is built on HTML5 technology.  The site states that media presentation is done with “the <video> and <audio> tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats.”  Because the site is written in HTML5, you won’t be able to view it with your grandmother’s Internet Explorer.  The following web browsers currently support the <video> and <audio> features of HTML5:

Firefox 3.5 beta 4
Opera 9.52 preview
Google Chrome 3
Safari 3.4 & Safari 4

TorrentFreak.com reports that “users can share video clips without having to worry about getting them taken offline due to copyright violations.”  This is certainly an interesting concept, as we’ve seen the efforts YouTube has taken to prevent copyright infringement.  Also, it will be interesting to see how Hollywood reacts to such a website.  The makers of The Pirate Bay are already in enough legal trouble as it is; it is somewhat surprising to see them make such a bold move.  Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde also said “it will be done when it’s done, in the future, in like a year or five.”  Five years for a YouTube clone?  Perhaps this was just his tongue-in-cheek way of saying “we’re working on it, stop asking when it’ll be ready!”

If you have a compatible browser, head over to The Video Bay and tell us what you think!  This will be a good chance to test out some of the cool new features of HTML5, and also see what the TPB guys are up to.  Be aware though, as the site isn’t even really in an Alpha stage.  They even put up a disclaimer saying “don’t expect anything to work at all.”  And most importantly, leave us a comment and tell us your thoughts!