As the Pirate Bay trial comes to its conclusion, bit torrent has once again been dragged, kicking and screaming into the light. The defendants of the case could spend their time worrying about the outcome, but instead they’ve channeled their efforts into adding more protection to keep the long arm of the law away from those who use the service for nefarious purposes. They’ve developed a new service called IPREDATOR, which promises to be better at keeping users’ details a secret than current VPN services.

The service is currently in private beta, and will be gradually rolled out to all users some time around April 1st. The significance of the date isn’t thanks to April Fool’s Day, but because that’s the date when Sweden’s contraversial new Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) come into effect, which grant copyright holders more rights to get their hands on file sharers’ details. You’ve got to hand it to the Pirate Bay – they’ve got a lot of chutspa.