Italy: blocked Pirate Bay users redirected to IFPI

Is corporate censorship by the music industry what we want for Europe?  

Italian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been ordered by a judge to block access to the Swedish peer-to-peer file trading site The Pirate Bay. It's understood the order was given on 8th August by a judge in the city of Bergamo, in the north of Italy, and sent to all the large Italian ISPs. It is understood that they  have since complied with it.

The Pirate Bay is understood to have put in place measures which permit users to get access in spite of the blocks.

However,  what concerned me was a report in TorrentFreak that the blocked users were being redirected to a page hosted on an IFPI-owned server. I felt it unwise to report this without checking, and having carried out reverse IP and Whois checks on the IP address of the redirect page , I can confirm that this is the case.  I have already commented on  the changes to European law which have been voted through in the Telecoms Package, which reduce ISP liability for blocking content, contrary to existing European law. This judgement - with a redirect to IFPI -  only serves to confirm my view that this is a change demanded by the music industry and the politicians are giving in to such pressure without taking the trouble to understand the wider implications. Censorship doesn't have to be done by the State. And ISPs are capable of putting up their own redirect pages. If P2P sites can be blocked to support copyright, and traffic redirected to the rights-holders, what comes next? 

The story is covered by the International Herald Tribune, and by TorrentFreak .