March 26, 2010

By By Mark Worden, Milan

The Italian music industry's battle with the controversial Swedish BitTorrent tracker the Pirate Bay continues.

Officers from the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's fiscal police force, operating in the northern Italian town of Bergamo, have seized and closed down labaia.it ("the bay"), a proxy site which enabled Italian users to access Pirate Bay.

Italian users have been unable to access the Pirate Bay directly for some time, following a series of court rulings. Italian access to the Pirate Bay was first blocked by a court in Bergamo in August 2008.

Swedish supporters of the Pirate Bay proceeded to denounce Italy as a "fascist state" and the ruling was overturned on appeal the following month. That appeal ruling was itself overturned by Italy's Court of Cassation in September 2009.

When a local court in Bergamo re-considered the case earlier this week, in light of the Court of Cassation ruling, it decided that all access to Pirate Bay in Italy should be blocked, prompting the fiscal police officers to apply that order to the proxy site.

In a statement Italy's major label representative body, the IFPI-affiliated FIMI, says it is "satisfied" with this latest development.

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