Pirates aren't particularly well-known for their critical thinking skills, whether you're talking about the parrot-on-the-shoulder variety or the sort that illegally downloads files from the Internet. But the claim that facilitating the illegal download of hundreds of thousands of movies, films, and video games is "fighting censorship" would seem outrageous even to the daftest buccaneer, right?

Wrong. The Pirate Bay, an infamous haven for digital piracy said to be blocked by a number of European and Middle Eastern countries, claimed that its PirateBrowser is doing just that. The tool allows people who live in those countries to access the Pirate Bay and a number of other piracy-enabling websites in a move the Pirate Bay describes as "circumventing censorship."

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to such grand-standing. A column in the Guardian describes the site as "an emblem of the debate over censorship and digital policy," an idol around which the "hacktivist digital dissidence scene" is able to assemble. And here I was thinking that the site is simply the best place to find new episodes of "Breaking Bad" without having to pay for cable.

PirateBrowser could be seen as a tool that allows the censored masses to know the boundless wilds that is the Pirate Bay. Or it could be seen as a tool that provides easier access to a website that makes money by selling ads against content that is often illegal to download or share.

And yet, all intentions aside, the Pirate Bay has raised a good question regarding censorship and the Web -- namely, when does blocking a website become censorship?

There is a remarkable difference between censoring citizens by preventing them from accessing the Internet, as Syria did when it shut down the entire country's connection to the Web in December 2012, and preventing people from illegally downloading files, however. Or, at least, there seems to be.

But one could argue that blocking any website, regardless of the legality of its content, is restricting free speech. CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince said as much while defending his company's decision to continue serving a controversial website. "One of the greatest strengths of the United States is a belief that speech, particularly political speech, is sacred," Prince writes on CloudFlare's blog. "A website, of course, is nothing but speech."

The trouble stems from the conflation of a government effectively censoring the entire Internet in order to maintain control over the narrative presented to its citizenry and a government blocking access to a single website, because it offers easy access to illegal content. Wanting to be able to download "Game of Thrones" is vastly different from wanting the ability to communicate with the outside world during wartime -- comparing the two is a disservice to the latter.

Confusion surrounding the issue isn't helped by the Pirate Bay's hosting of legal files. Though the site is often used for illegal purposes, there are people who use torrents to share large files that are well within their rights to share. Blocking the Pirate Bay removes access to those files without discrimination, forcing each individual country to decide, whether it's better to allow access to illegal content simply because someone might eventually use the same site for legal purposes or if it's better to block it all and take their chances.

"Are we comfortable saying that something is so disgusting and uncomfortable that we just don't want to have it online at all?" Prince says. "The hard part isn't coming up with things that make us uncomfortable, it's coming up with a spectrum where the lines are between those things, and who do we want to trust with where that line is?"

None of which is to say that every teenager downloading "American Pie" from the Pirate Bay, because he heard that it offers tips on pastry-based masturbation, is doing so because they believe in "free" information in a non-financial sense. But the pirates might be making a case for a tool like PirateBrowser despite themselves, turning an anti-capitalist mentality into a vaguely politically relevant tool.

Put another way: Building a tool that allows an ads-based business to get in front of more eyeballs is not politically relevant by itself, but it can contribute to a larger conversation about censorship, free speech, and Internet freedom.

Just so long as we never have to read anything resembling the phrase "hacktivist digital dissidence scene" again.