With even "free" countries like the United Kingdom and Australia imposing Internet censorship on certain types of of online content and specific Websites (often in wildly inappropriate and overreaching ways — I'm talking about you, Oz), clever means for accessing verboten Websites are of interest to more than a few of the world's Web users. Enter Pirate Bay, that storied gateway to shared media and information government officials don't want you to have, which has introduced the PirateBrowser, specifically designed to bypass censorship.

At Pirate Bay, the PirateBrowser is described thusly:

PirateBrowser is a bundle package of the Tor client (Vidalia), FireFox Portable browser (with foxyproxy addon) and some custom configs that allows you to circumvent censorship that certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland impose onto their citizens.

Despite the use of Tor in the browser, PirateBrowser is designed to bypass Internet blockades of Websites, not to guarantee anonymity. That means users who risk legal penalties for accessing restricted Websites will want to look for another solution. But for Web surfers in countries, like Australia, that secretly force ISPs to block seemingly legal Websites, or the U.K., where people may have to go on record to opt out of Internet restrictions, Pirate Browser could prove very useful. (Pirate Bay recommends, "If you are looking for something more secure you may want to try a VPN like PrivacyIO.")

Pirate Bay itself is a frequent target of online censors, and a likely beneficiary of any tool that bypasses such controls.

According to TorrentFreak, PirateBrowser was downloaded more than 100,000 times in the first three days of its launch this past Saturday, as part of Pirate Bay's celebration of its tenth anniversary.

Get PirateBrowser here.