Like many other websites on the Internet The Pirate Bay makes its money from ads. Due to its reputation the torrent site generally has to settle for lower grade banners, but the Canadian Government recently broke this trend. This week ads from the Canadian Department of Finance's Economic Action Plan appeared on The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately for the infamous torrent site, the feds pulled the banner campaign as soon as they were alerted to it.

The Pirate Bay is among the 50 most visited websites in Canada. Considering this popularity, it wouldn’t be strange for the government to reward the site for its loyal service to the Canadian public.

However, the banner campaign for the Department of Finance’s Economic Action Plan that went on display this week was not supposed to show up on The Pirate Bay.

The Ottawa Citizen reports that The Pirate Bay ran the ads but that the site wasn’t targeted intentionally. Instead, the feds are quick to point the finger at one of the advertising networks they teamed up with.

“The Department of Finance did not purchase ad space on The Pirate Bay web site. We did however, include four ad networks in our media buy (Bell Media, Canoe, Microsoft, Yahoo),” The Department of Finance explains.

What’s in it for you?

According to the Finance Department the advertising networks they work with follow strict guidelines and have “brand safety filters” in place. However, somewhere down the line a mistake was made and the feds point their finger at Yahoo.

“Each network confirmed that this site is not owned by them and that the appearance of the ad on this site is unauthorized. However, upon further research it was determined that some banner ads were appearing with an ‘ad choices icon’ which traces back to Yahoo,” the department states.

However, Yahoo! say they have conducted a thorough investigation into the misplaced banner and conclude that actually Sympatico is to blame.

“We have confirmed that Yahoo! was not responsible for the EAP ad showing up on The Pirate Bay. We have been able to trace the ad to Sympatico who were responsible for this ad’s appearance on the site, and they have been notified of the issue so they can take the appropriate actions.”

And so the finger pointing continues.

The Pirate Bay has witnessed the drama with a smile and has even considered plastering their entire site, especially the home page, with ads for Economic Action Plan. There’s no way the Department of Finance can stop that.

But first they have to buy a boat and loads of rum using the Canadian tax dollars generated by the ads.