The music industry has been trying to shut down The Pirate Bay for some time now. This is a complicated process, since The Pirate Bay is quite good at proving that the company is not, technically, doing anything wrong. Each country is going through numerous court decisions that will eventually lead up to the blocking or acceptance of the music site. Recently, the High Court in the United Kingdom has ordered ISPs to block UK residents from accessing The Pirate Bay site.

This court ruling was met with a lot of disappointment from The Pirate Bay users and ISP providers alike. To many, The Pirate Bay is not an illegal outfit and many feel that songs should be free to download. On the flip side, the UK High Court has found that The Pirate Bay does, in fact, violate numerous copyright laws. So, what’s a UK resident to do? Find a new way to download music or start buying tunes from a site like iTunes. Along with the court’s ruling comes many mixed feelings and angry residents, as can be expected.

Is Privacy Respected?

Whether or not The Pirate Bay offers illegal services has been the topic of much debate over the past decade or so. In case you’re not familiar with the site, The Pirate Bay allows users to download music for free and share music files with other Pirate Bay users. All of this happens for free and without the watchful eye of the music industry. So, if The Pirate Bay is blatantly breaking laws, why hasn’t this site been blocked or shut down yet? Simply, those who run The Pirate Bay are quite good at dodging lawmakers.

In some countries, like the UK, accessing The Pirate Bay is, indeed illegal. Other countries are in the process of trying to make the site illegal and some countries are ignoring the issue altogether. Even though residents of the UK are not allowed to access The Pirate Bay any longer, savvy web users know that that setting up proxies and alternative options may provide access to the music site for some time, until authorities shut down those sources as well, that is.

A Matter of Security?"

If you use The Pirate Bay or are totally against it, make sure to leave a note below. There are two very different sides to the music copyright coin and most people are on one side or the other. To some, downloading and sharing music is perfectly fine, but to others (like the UK High Court) this process is completely illegal from start to finish. The Pirate Bay happens to be the largest torrent site in the world and thousands (maybe millions?) of people rely on this site to find tunes that can’t be found elsewhere. More importantly, do governments have the right to block sites from users? Is this a matter of security or privacy?

Interesting, the founders at The Pirate Bay haven’t made any move to allow courts or countries to shut down the site. In fact, The Pirate Bay is now more secure than it ever was and that security is all about making it impossible for anyone to shut the site down. Still, the judgment in the UK stands and if you try to access The Pirate Bay site you will likely be turned around.