When the Pirate Bay main site went offline a few weeks ago, there was a scramble to fill the vacuum left by the web’s largest trafficker of stolen goods. Isohunt launched the Oldpiratebay.org and promptly found themselves with millions of visits per day. The site’s success has prompted the operators to offer payments to developers, moderators and uploaders to help the site develop features and improve its offerings.

While I can respect that the site wants to improve its user experience through development and moderation,  the thought of paying bounties to uploaders is another issue entirely. Quite simply, rewarding someone for being a good thief is appalling to anyone who respects intellectual property and a creator’s right to profit from the output of their mind. I wonder if they considered offering those bounties to the authors, musicians and software developers who have their livelihood threatened and works stolen.

Now the sad thing is… this isn’t really news. Bounties for uploads have been a feature on the pirate landscape for years, however I felt that this latest incident was worth noting.