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The Pirate Bay Docked in Italy? Not Really!
Techtree News Staff, Aug 11, 2008 1700 hrs ISTThe latest blockade in Italy of the enormously popular P2P site, The Pirate Bay, may do little except increase awareness of both the website and workarounds.
Italian ISPs have buckled under pressure from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) , and blocked access to the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing website, The Pirate Bay.
While IFPI's wages war on The Pirate Bay, the guys at the site have a solution ready for their Italian users, namely a change in IP address - Italian pirates can now visit Labaia.org and continue to barter copyrighted material.
In characteristically measured tones, TPB said, "We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech," the blog post begins. "This time it's Italy."
TPB further suggested, "[Italy] suffer[s] from a really bad background as one of the IFPIs was formed in Italy during the fascist years and now they have a fascist leader in the country, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is also the most powerful person in Italian media owning a lot of companies that compete with The Pirate Bay."
The website promised, unequivocally, that they would "win this time."
Earlier, they had delicately asked record labels to go screw themselves after IFPI brought a 15 million kroner ($2.5 million) lawsuit in TPB's home country of Sweden at the behest of record labels.
While TPB has already changed the IP for its site, which it claims should make it work again for most ISPs, it also recommends that Italian visitors visit labaia.org and switch their DNS to OpenDNS, a popular third-party DNS solution that could allow users to work around Italian ISP filters.
While this whole issue is enormously entertaining, with TPB firing one salvo after the other, we doubt very much if IFPI can actually achieve anything concrete - that is, other than giving TPB's colorful spokespersons more airtime. Facing flak for copyright issues is nothing new to TPB - a similar ban by Denmark earlier this year resulted in increased traffic for TPB, as did MPAA's tirade against P2P sites.
In keeping with the precedent, the blockade in Italy may do little except, ironically, increase awareness for both the website and workarounds.
Source: Ars Technica
While IFPI's wages war on The Pirate Bay, the guys at the site have a solution ready for their Italian users, namely a change in IP address - Italian pirates can now visit Labaia.org and continue to barter copyrighted material.
In characteristically measured tones, TPB said, "We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech," the blog post begins. "This time it's Italy."
TPB further suggested, "[Italy] suffer[s] from a really bad background as one of the IFPIs was formed in Italy during the fascist years and now they have a fascist leader in the country, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is also the most powerful person in Italian media owning a lot of companies that compete with The Pirate Bay."
The website promised, unequivocally, that they would "win this time."
Earlier, they had delicately asked record labels to go screw themselves after IFPI brought a 15 million kroner ($2.5 million) lawsuit in TPB's home country of Sweden at the behest of record labels.
'Record labels can go screw themselves'
While TPB has already changed the IP for its site, which it claims should make it work again for most ISPs, it also recommends that Italian visitors visit labaia.org and switch their DNS to OpenDNS, a popular third-party DNS solution that could allow users to work around Italian ISP filters.
While this whole issue is enormously entertaining, with TPB firing one salvo after the other, we doubt very much if IFPI can actually achieve anything concrete - that is, other than giving TPB's colorful spokespersons more airtime. Facing flak for copyright issues is nothing new to TPB - a similar ban by Denmark earlier this year resulted in increased traffic for TPB, as did MPAA's tirade against P2P sites.
In keeping with the precedent, the blockade in Italy may do little except, ironically, increase awareness for both the website and workarounds.
Source: Ars Technica
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jim payne
,pleasant hill, ca. usa, on Aug 15, 2008 04:06 AM
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