Swedish BitTorrent Tracker site responds by setting up mirror site called "Labaia," which means "The Bay" in Italian, and showing how futile efforts to censor the Internet in a supposedly democratic country can be.
It was almost two weeks ago that I reported on how Colombo-BT.org, the apparent largest BitTorrent tracker site in Italy, had been shut down by Italian police.
The Guardia di Finanza undertook the action in cooperation with FPM, the Italian anti-music piracy group affiliated with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
In a strange sign of things to come Enzo Mazza, president of the FPM, called Colombo-BT.org "Italy’s version of The Pirate Bay." For now, after having shuttered Colombo-BT, Italian authorities have ordered the country’s ISPs to begin blocking The Pirate Bay.
From The Pirate Bay blog:
We’re quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators.
This time it’s Italy. They suffer 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 and he would like to stay that way – so one of his lackeys, Giancarlo Mancusi, ordered a shutdown of our domain name and IP in Italy to make it hard to not support Berlusconis empire.
We have had fights previously in Italy, recently with our successful art installation where we had to storm Fortezza in order to get our art done. And as usual, we won. We will also win this time.
The Pirate Bay, no strangers to being blocked by ISPs, have already developed several work arounds for the Italian BitTorrent community, just as they did for Danes after a Danish court ordered ISP Tele2 Denmark to begin blocking subscribers from accessing it almost 6 months ago.
In addition to changing the IP addresses for The Pirate Bay, which "makes it work for half the ISPs again," they have also set up a mirror site called La Baia (labaiia.org) which means "The Bay" in Italian.
The Pirate Bay also recommends that Italian BitTorrent users switch their DNS to OpenDNS so they can bypass their ISPs filters. As a "bonus," this practice will also let them bypass the other filters installed by the Italian government.
Though the IFPI and Italian authorities may disagree, the real winner here is The Pirate Bay for it once again proves that efforts to censor or filter the Internet are absolutely futile in a supposedly democratic country.
Arrrr!
Related Posts
- Italian Court Rules ISP Block of The Pirate Bay Illegal
- Danish ISPs Challenge Court Order to Block The Pirate Bay
- Swedish ISPs Ignore Request to Block The Pirate Bay
- Colombo-BT.org, Largest Italian BitTorrent Site, Busted
- Italian Prosecutor Targets the Pirate Bay
Loading ...
Kinda makes you wonder how legitimate it is for a media mogul to run for top stop in a country. I mean if you already control most of the media is it really fair to be competing in what is usually a game of who can make better friends with the media?
@MR
Never though of it that way for if anything he’s biased in the situation.
We don’t have that situation in the UK. We just get certain media moguls cosying up to the government so that they can dictate UK policies. Achieves the same end result though. And people thought that democracy really existed.
I heard one of the reason Russia invaded Georgia was to blow up the the buildings that house the servers that bit torrent sites store billions of dollars worth of movies music and software anyone care to comment on that ?
If that is the case sarge I sure hope it leaks out. The death of hundreds for the purpose of copyright policing wouldn’t go over well with the world. In fact if it were the case I would think the media interest should be charged with crimes against humanity on the international courts.
actually I think the world would be happy about it I hate pirates they are killing economies all over the world and the worst part is that they refuse to acknowledge
I mean would you be made if I came to your place ripped it off and put up a site for all to see and sold off your stuff that is the same scenario I know so many hot shot producers that are now broke they used to contribute 1MM a month to the economy and now they work at restaurants as waiters ? one of them was on TMZ he had to give back all of his cars to the leasing company and they are still suing him for 500k he used to be worth 20MM now he is broke why ???
downloading music
I myself lost over 1MM to magesy I am broke now as well I actually ran into a kid that stole my software and I put him in the hospital
he is suing me but what the fuck do I care ? I have no money left I mean I put over 100k in development in the the software only to
get it ripped and put up on magesy that is bullshit !!!!!! any fucking kid I see with my shit and he is not registered is going to get fucked up the problem is that I may only run into 1 of them once every few months. I am glad magesy is down I hope they all get shut down you watch how quickly the economy turns around when all pirate sites are outlawed.
this is wrong end of story and pirates have no rights and those that steal should have no rights everything I have I bought why the fuck is it so hard for the rest of you to buy instead of steal ????
Why the hell did we build our economies on Intellectual Property in the first place? I for one have contributed massively to the software industry to the past but not to become obsenely wealthy for the privilige of having a better IQ than others but in Open Source collaberations where people work together to make software work.
Oh yeah… Answers for the last post. People rip IP because a) it’s a challenge; b) because IP exploits those with less cash to make more for those that do and c) the more fuss that’s made about it the more people will do it.
Sarge if you’re serious then you shouldn’t even be in the market you’re in. Every independent study on the effects of file sharing when it comes to music sales has found that it has no effect. You may find that hard to believe as most narrowly minded individuals do but people are willing to pay for music if they can afford it simply to support the artist. That’s changing probably now as fans are being alienated but there are still a large portion of the population that will buy music. Those that do not still buy merchandise and attend concerts hence still generating profit. All file sharing has done is deject copyright into a more organic state in the future we may even see a return of music to being a performance art. Which is a good thing in my opinion because then the focus is the art performance and talent.
The industry is changing and only the people who are smart enough to adapt will survive. Now I guess in your case you sell software. Well guess what even if all software was free companies would still need software to run their business. So software developers would still have jobs albeit you wouldn’t necessarily make millions at it. The reality is tho that even with filesharing people still buy the products if they find value in it and can afford it. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that 80% of more of the data being shared is stuff people would of not purchased if they had to pay for it.
I also remember reading about a study that linked overly restrictive intellectual property policies to the growing poverty gap. By overly restricting intellectual property you are creating a system where only those with the ability to finance the patents copyrights etc can compete. Either way the system is broken and needs to be fixed and the people are doing it whether corporate interests want them to or not.
well those studies are way way off 1 producer that used to make 1MM a year employed 40 people under him or her lawyers managers assistants re agents and the list goes on the labels they use to employee 30 executives each executive employees 50 folkd under him or her now times that producer and the label by 10000 and you will see that over over 1MM folks have lost their jobs in the music industry alone.
it is no joke and when I did get into the business there were no pirates if I had known what I know now I would have spent the last 20 years learning to make movies not music or software also do you know at least 90 of the music producers artists are now web designers ???
do you know how much a web designer makes ????
less than a worker at walmart or mickey d’s
yes the pirates are truly hated by music people from all walks of life.
Haha now your just a joke. No one can be as daft as you.
mountain rage anytime anyplace you want to meet up you let me know I will bring with me all of my friends who are still upset that they lost everything and then let us see you laugh
also the reason governments are now coming down hard on ISP’s is because they are losing their rich and upper class residents ie tax base
which is affecting the governments bottom line
Not a fighter here only reason anyone ever wants to beat up someone else is because they are intellectually incapable of making a valid argument through peaceful methods. But then again your simply a troll so you probably don’t have friends. Either way the industry is fine and doesn’t need protecting. We should just eliminate copyright all together and let them figure things out in an open market.
okay I will try to approach this from a calm demeanor
so you are saying that if I was to spend 10 years of blood sweat and tears take out 20MM in loans mortgage all of the family properties to the hilt to get those loans to make a software program that would revolutionize the way you play games I should just give it away for free ?
just curious what kind of work or business are you in ?
My bad I missed something in explaining my ideals. Sort of lost the drive to argue with you. My view of copyright is that it should be purely a commercial restriction. The general public should not be restricted by copyright laws. Now I think in most cases software falls under copyright rather than a patent but I might be mistaken there. But in my opinion any not for profit endeavor should not have to pay royalties for copyright. Now if you were a company needing software for a purpose such as the physics engine for a video game then you would have to respect the copyright and pay royalties. You may wonder how the video game developer is supposed to make money when everyone is downloading their work well be creative. Many companies are starting to sell games with adds built in monthly fees for online play or special editions that cost more for collectors. These are all innovative methods for these companies to make a profit even under loose restrictions. You also seem to have this belief that everyone will download if their is no risk involved but studies have shown that to be false. In fact open source projects have shown that to be false. Regardless the industries have to be creative rather than assertive. The public should not be made victims for wanting to enforce their social rights.
Wow getting kind of heated in here.
I agree with MR in that “…the video game developer….[needs to be] creative.”
They need to devise models like WOW or other MORPG where the software is free but you have to pay a fee to connect. Thats just where technology is headed if not there already and unless software developers do get creative they’ll be a hopeless cause like the RIAA.
Korea is leaps and bounds ahead of us in this dept because they’ve faced rampant piracy (much higher than in the US) for a very long time and so software developers have had to be creative charging players for things like new outfits weapons etc..
Exactly Soul companies are only starting to introduce those micro transactions. To be honest I have no idea why certain people feel that corporate interest should trump those of society. There was a time when society decided what rights it had not industry. We should return to that model and corporations will adapt. The reason I believe the public shouldn’t be liable under copyright is because they simply don’t have the resources to defend themselves and shouldn’t need to inform themselves of all the legal implications. Unless you are directly profiting from copyright you shouldn’t have to pay royalties. But it once and you can listen to it anywhere and let anyone else listen so long as you are not making money from it.
Man my brain farts are massive today need more sleep.
Unless you are directly profiting from copyright you should have to pay royalties. You should be able to buy a book game movie song once and lend share and sell the original copy. As soon as part of your profits come from copyright you should be made to pay royalties. This would be things like someone performing your song for cash night clubs etc. This should exclude places like hair salons schools and other places that may just play music as ambiance.
yes but if you are an author of a program and the software company puts it out how can you collect if 90 percent of sales are illegally downloaded
now you have a very good point about this new business model it is something I need to look into
All I am saying is that if the p2p and torrent sites are elimated you will see a record amount of profits from software companies retail stores and a 80% increase in economic revenue. and more jobs created for next year I was supposed to make 1MM this year I made 100k total now I have to lay off 40 of my staff that work for me my overhead is 200k and I have to fold my company and I feel bad for my employees they are owed 3 months of pay but how can I pay them ? I had to move into a secure tower because of threats on my life and I want to pay them but I do not have the money to pay.
sarge wrote “if the p2p and torrent sites are elimated you will see a record amount of profits”
Just a little delusional are we? If p2p were eliminated you would see less people even using your software and the profits would remain the same. What you describe has been labeled voodoo economics for the simple fact that people won’t just magically line up at the stores just because p2p disappeared.
If there is well and truly a drop in profits it’s a result of something called a “depression” A Depression is where people have less money to spend. When people have less money to spend they won’t be buying your software as much. Therefore there is less profits. In the US there have been banks that went under. If banks are going under what are the chances of a small business not going under?
Besides if you’d like to debate this further might I recommend the forums?
Drew this is a forum and I understand what you are saying but I will give you an example
I have a friend he has a production studio they make indie films commercials
He has 20 programs that he uses for his business these programs cost upwards of 2000*10000 each they are high level cgi 3d motion graphics programs that are not available at your typical best buy you have to buy them from high end dealers in the motion picture industry.
He did not pay for any of them
his kid got them for him for free
that is 200000 worth of programs now he could have bought them but why bother ?
now times him by 10000 other film guys around the world with small production studios like his
and this is one category.
another guy I know has 200k worth of plugins in his computer for music
he could easily afford to buy them again why bother his brothers nephew got them from magesy
now I was a guest so I did not say anything to them when I saw this although it made me sick to my stomach I mean a guy with a 2MM house 2 550 2008 mercedes in the garage and he could not give a shit about what he was doing as a matter of fact he thinks that software ought to sell for 20 bucks a pop for a 10000 program now how can a software company make a profit if it only sell software to a limited client base of 2000 ? they have to price it accordingly. He like most others I have met lately are willing to wait for free. Worst yet others are pirating the software and reselling it at a 99 percent discount buying cars and homes with the money this is clearly wrong !!!!!!!
Drew I know you do not want p2p rapid share or torrent sites blocked I can understand that but again every dollar you steal from others you are stealing yourself the consequences of what we are going through right now started 5 years ago.
we are having the butterfly effect in a sense from of all of this rampant stealing across that globe
I really hope the governments block all pirating it is way way way out of control
in the next few years 20000 software companies are going out of business across the globe there will be over 50MM jobs lost from executives to programmers to engineers marketing staff advertisers and everyone else who works below them.
it will be an economic disaster why ? well software companies rent office space by the floor or the building they rent server space acres of buildings they support entire local economies they support entire cities
these handful of p2p sites can really bring down a multi trillion dollar industry that is unless something is done now.
p2p and torrent sites will put all us back into the steel age where in order to make a decent living you have to be skilled in iron coal coke or any industry that does not involve software yes there will be a few that have the coveted software jobs but they will be working for software companies that sell to the military high end business gaming not as much to the consumer.
over a 100000 software titles are put out every year at least 99% of them get ripped and spread through out the net.
wouldn’t that be ironic in 5 years the great nations of the globe brought down to their knees not by war or an alien invasion they were brought down by p2p torrent and rapid share sites.
One more note movie ticket prices are rising why ?
there is a big decline in audience numbers coming to the theaters and the studios are trying to stay alive
how is that for torrent p2p damage ?
Just a question for you sarge how do you feel about all the Opensource software. If I’m following your logic correctly its also evil and going to destroy the worlds economic structure. Blender will take away the millions someone can make from 3d software Gimp will steal all of photoshops profits open office will replace office cutting out billions in potential profit. Oh no open source is going to ruin the world.
the software I am talking about is not opensource It is like 5 dvd’s for one program you have to pay 20k to go to a school and learn it final cut pro is one another is 3d max another is light wave another one is maya these programs are used to make cgi for movies like transformers batman 2008 superman returns and many others.
the operators of these programs get 50 an hours if they are good at it.
so ironically the operators get free software to go out and make a good living but they do not pay for the software that is giving them a good wage.
opensource programs are worthless you cannot sell them thousands of programmers have contributed to them so there are no copyright holders on them they are free……..
the programs I am talking about have had millions spent in r&d salaries paid to like maybe 20 programmers who have all worked on the program in sections. producers of the programs and so forth.
blender is an old programming model it is worthless in the professional world of movies
goto
http://themutantchronicles.com
that movie was made with maya lighwave
blender could not even get into the same race with those programs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightwave
gimp ?
well first off photoshop is not that expensive I was talking about programs that are 1000 on up photoshop is like 200 bucks I think
I am talking about real programs that cost tens of thousands in training to learn to use
wrong link here is a better one
http://www.thomasjane.com/mutantChronicles/
Is 3d max even relevant last time I used it it was like the lowest common denominator in the graphics market. As you made obvious all you understand is profit and control. OpenSource is slowly but surely bringing forward quality software. Although not always the best it is improving. You also find many open source plug in packs which work better than some commercial offerings. Anyway the software you talk about will exists whether or not people are pirating it. Most people who pirate it are doing so to learn it they would never pay the price for it because they are using it for hobby projects. Those who are using it for commercial projects by all means sue them if they are a big enough company word will get out.
well here is some good news
mervyns steak and ale bennigans starbucks and many more chains are declaring bankrupty or they are closing locations laying off millions of workers
we are heading back into the 1920’s depression slowly but surely
I am moving to Europe until this all blows over
even minimum wage jobs are going to be hard to get so soon enough riots are going to happen again
so what I am telling you is no longer relevant
the damage has been done and at this time there will be 10 years maybe more of no work.
hey it is what it is.
download all you want it is all free right ???
good luck to you
what all of you do has no effect on me financially I was set for life even before I got into this business
what all of you do though will affect your neighbors friends relatives not all of them but definitely some of them
between rampant illegal downloading
and real estate crashing
it will be a very interesting decade coming up to say the least.
It may mark the end of the US as we know it
Depression tends to occur when wealth is unevenly distributed and power concentrated to a select few. For an economy to stay strong and stable it needs diversification and innovation. The only reason the economy is going to shit is because politicians allowed a select few to control everything and run it all to the ground. Now with all the money concentrated within 5% of the population there is no money to go around limiting the spending needed for a strong economy. Further the excessive controls put on patent and copyright have forced innovation oversees as very few can build an enterprise when their is millions needed just for royalties bureaucratics and simply competing against the big players always trying to shut you out. File sharing has nothing to do with the depression it has everything to do with politics greed and globalization.
I understand but file sharing is killing the dreams of so many of the impoverished and destroying dreams and families
on the software side many recently laid off young programmers have resorted to suicide so that their young wives can still find a new husband
these programmers were very talented and had great ideas hell they could have taken us into the 21st century now
but their ideas and dreams will never see the light of day
thanks to file sharing
many communities that once housed talented programmers software companies are now ghost towns hell you can buy a home for a dollar there but who wants to live in a ghost town full of gangsters and drug addicts ?
imagine now thanks to file sharing there will be no more new versions of
rolling stones u2 led zepplin prince jennifer lopez britney spears 50 cent microsoft best buy ford chevrolet and the list goes on
yes file sharing has taking away any dreams the few talented dreamers had any hope of living.
file sharing is greed greed from getting as many free songs and programs for free as you and others can.
it is wrong and because there are to many of you doing it we cannot stop it
in the 90’s if one of you stole from us we would tie you up in a room and beat you so bad not to kill you but to teach you a lesson and so then you would never steal again from us you would also tell your friends not to steal from us your friends would tell their friends and so on and so on and so we would not have to worry about anyone stealing from us.
all we can do now is beg you and others to stop stop killing the dreams of others that now have no hope in the music software world.
I know what I am saying is falling on deaf ears
so while you are others are getting your free music and software these companies are slowly losing trillions and going out of business which is cause a domino effect and causing other industries to follow it will be hard to get a job in the next year in any decent industry.
since the remainder of all of the high end jobs will be filled up by those with MBA’s attorney’s or equivalent you will most likely have to work at wendys mickey d’s walmart to eat
you mentioned you are getting a degree in mechanical engineering unless you can get a job designing oil rigs I imagine you may find it hard out there to find any kind of work
I predict in the next 2 years about 70% of the industries will be out of business in the US
with the combination of
file sharing
real estate crashing
energy prices sky rocketing
it is the perfect storm to bring this power structure to it’s knees
I myself will be on the beaches in Ibiza far away from this perfect storm for the time being.
Alright I’m tired of arguing with your thick skull. This last post will just list all the argumentative fallacies in your post just for fun.
First argument : appeal to emotion it has nothing to do with whether or not filesharing is moral just or not. You used it allot in your other pots.
Red hearing: It doesn’t matter whether or not the programmers we’re talented all that matters is whether or not filesharing affected their lives.
Appeal to Tradition: We used to be able to do certain things so we should be able to do them now. Such as beating people in a room in the 90’s. Just because something used to be accepted it doesn’t mean it should be now
Slippery slope: You claim a couple times that if you do something a certain event would happen and then happen again and again to whatever result. But you show have no evidence this will happen its purely speculation.
You are also taking part in hasty generalization. If one industry is having trouble you assume all will and inevitably fall.
I’m sure there are more you probably even have some structural issues with your arguments I don’t feel like wasting my time on you anymore.
well all I can say is good luck to you
and yes the domino effect is starting to happen
I imagine the market is going to crash any week now
they are already offering homes for $1
other areas 400 a down 400 a month
so far no takers
how can people pay if they are not working ?
I am done for now
when it all hits the fan believe me I will be back on here laughing about it
and it is not just free music and software that is the problem
it is the combination of different events that have occurred in the last 4 weeks
they have created the perfect storm
even hedge fund managers are closing up shop and giving their clients back their cash
and that is a very bad sign as hedge fund managers are supposed to be the titan gods of wall street
I wanted to bring up something that might have some bearing on the anti-free-range attitudes of most parents. ,