Torrent tracker The Pirate Bay plans to offer a VPN tunneling service to the public starting April 1.
Dubbing the service IPREDator after the controversial Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) that takes effect the same day. IPRED's main goal is to make it easier for copyright holders to acquire the personal data of suspected illegal file sharers.
By offering a VPN service that doesn't log its traffic, IPREDator is simultaneously setting itself apart from other Web-based VPN services and offering what looks like a way to legally evade IPRED. Without logs, users will be able to exchange data without worrying about a subpoena revealing to whom the data packets were going, or what their contents were.
Other details about the new VPN service are thin, except that users will be asked to pay a small premium, approximately US$6.77, for the service. It's also not clear if the service will be compatible with other non-file sharing uses, or if it will try to compete with other encrypted tunneling services like LogMeIn or GoToMyPC.
The current beta is free and can be signed up for at the IPREDator site, although it's taking only 500 testers.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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