The Pirate Bay down soon: Bloggers seek alternative today

Access to The Pirate Bay will be taken down, in a few weeks from today in the UK. By court order, the allegedly-illegal magnet-link search engine will be blocked by the nation's biggest ISPs. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers find alternatives.
 
By Richi Jennings: Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: This is your Sharpie on drugs...
 
 
Mary-Ann Russon rushes in (but she's no fool):

[The] music industry trade association asked a group of UK ISPs...to voluntarily block access to The Pirate Bay in November 2011, but the ISPs said they [needed] a court order.
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The entertainment industry has been trying to bring down The Pirate Bay for almost a decade. ... Recently [it] switched to using magnet links, instead of torrents, and switched domains from .com to .se.
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Justice Arnold previously ruled...that both the users and operators of The Pirate Bay were infringing...copyrights.   

    
Aunty Beeb talks to the industry body, and other people:

BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay...operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music...without paying a penny to the people who created them. "This is wrong [creators] deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."
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The Pirate Party...[which] backs copyright reform, said this latest move will "not put any extra pennies into the pockets of artists. ... The truth is that we are on a slippery slope towards internet censorship."
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Critics of site-blocking argue that such measures are ineffective. ... Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, called the move "pointless and dangerous. ... It will fuel calls for further...internet censorship of many kinds."   

But Frederic Lardinois disagrees with the BPI's CEO:

A number of studies...have questioned this line of reasoning and instead found that sites like The Pirate Bay actually have a positive impact on...music sales.   

And Ernesto has more bad news for the music industry:

[The] Pirate Bay [said] that this measure is going to do very little to stop people. ... “This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising.”
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Similar verdicts were already handed down in Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Finland. ... [Yet] The Pirate Bay continues to grow month after month.   

Also, Lee Bell points out the irony in the figures:

Despite its aggression [against] sites...for "commercially exploiting music", the BPI announced in January that sales of digital music had increased [for] a fourth consecutive good year.   

Meanwhile, Ewan Spence spells out how pointless a block would be, and how dangerous:

And what happens if a brand new site called ‘TehPirateBay’ pops up?
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Given that The Pirate Bay holds no content itself...when will Google be legally blocked? ... [In] the eyes of the law, what has been banned is a search engine. If you follow today’s ruling through...then Google could easily be banned. ... And Bing. And Ask.com. ... [B]ecause they can link to copyrighted content.   

   
And Finally...
This is your Sharpie. This is your Sharpie on drugs.
   
 
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. He's the creator and main author of Computerworld's IT Blogwatch, for which he has won ASBPE and Neal awards. He also writes The Long View for IDG Enterprise. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.