The Video Bay launched

The people behind The Pirate Bay, a notorious BitTorrent-tracking website, have announced a new venture - The Video Bay.

The Pirate Bay sold

Described as a 'beta extreme' at the moment, and coming with the warning "don't expect anything to work at all", The Video Bay is a hosting service where members can post videos.

Similar to BayWords, a hosted blogging service run by The Pirate Bay, the video service is open to anyone to use, regardless of whether or not the material they post breaks copyright laws.

"This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don't bug us too much if the site ain't working properly," a message on the site reads.

Four members of The Pirate Bay were recently sentenced to jail time and a collective fine of around £3m after being found guilty of assisting copyright infringement.

However, the four men have appealed against their convictions and the case is expected to drag on well into next year.

The new video-hosting site is sure to enrage the anti-piracy lobby in Sweden, where the site operates from.

However, there is also a strong pro-piracy movement in the country where The Pirate Party won a seat in the recent European elections.