Yesterday, many news outlets started sharing the news about infamous torrent website The Pirate Bay adding some powerful new technology to their website. In conjunction with the browser plugin Torrents Time, they have begun streaming videos directly from the site, and music is likely around the corner.

Streaming services like Spotify, and more recently Apple Music, have had a storied past with the general public. They came about only after the industry had been gutted by the first (illegal) digital music company that mattered, Napster. Combatting piracy is a big reason record labels license their music for streaming, and although piracy still seems to be on the rise, so does the acceptance of streaming as a business model among rights holders and music fans.

The Pirate Bay isn’t even the first company to cross the ideas of illegal music and streaming. The company Grooveshark started in 2006 with streaming music generated by users’ uploads, long after Napster’s shut down but before it’s legal alternative Spotify launched. Like TPB, Grooveshark fought harder than most against the barrage of web censors, government interventions, and court ordered shutdowns that came their way over the years. But while TPB has somehow managed to stay open, Grooveshark finally called it quits last year, apologizing and agreeing to a multi-million dollar settlement.

While the news of other companies’ shutdowns are likely of little concern to The Pirate Bay, I don’t believe the news of their new streaming product is all that exciting either. The reason piracy skyrocketed in the early 2000’s was not just because it was free, but because it was actually much easier to use than legal methods of acquiring digital music. Television shows are still widely pirated and shared online, mostly because fewer young people are willing to deal with cable companies.

Spotify and other legal services have, in my opinion, already figured out how to get users, even if they haven’t figured out how to make money yet. The recipe is simple: make it free, and make it easy. While torrent sites are free, they usually require some knowledge of how to use the technology and navigate their spammy websites. Spotify is reliable, easy to use, and ad-supported is close enough to free for most people.

The new offer from The Pirate Bay may be free, but requires installing a third party plugin, then sorting through poorly tagged and titled files that are often fake and may not even have enough fellow file-sharers to be active at the time. So while the technology may scare some movie and music industry executives, I’m guessing it won’t gain the acceptance required to make a difference in the market.

In short, while The Pirate Bay has added a feature that gains them new powerful enemies in the industry, it’s unlikely to make many friends in the process.

Read more about the author Kyle M. Bagley at http://www.kylembagley.com