Pirate Bay evades Italian blockade

Italian ISPs are doing their best to block access to torrent site the Pirate Bay, but the Swedish site has already acted to help Italians evade the ban.

Italy's deputy prosecutor ordered ISPs to block the site late last week. But the feisty pirates quickly fought back.

The Pirate Bay recomended its Italian users switch to OpenDNS to bypass their ISP's filters or use the URL Labaia.org - which means "the bay" in Italian.

On its blog Pirate Bay said: "We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech... This time it's Italy." The blog blamed "fascist leader" Silvio Berlusconi for the shutdown and said he owns a lot of companies that Pirate Bay competes with.

Apart from bypassing the ban, Italians were also urged to contact their service providers to complain about the block.

Previous attempts to ban the site have been counter-productive, providing free publicity and actually increasing the number of people using the service. ®