The world's newest blockade of The Pirate Bay has been thwarted in a matter of minutes. After a court in Spain ordered the country's ISPs to block the notorious site on Friday, users who tweaked their connections to use Google's DNS instead of the one provided by their service provider were back on the site in seconds.

One of the major strategies of the world’s leading entertainment companies is to have sites like The Pirate Bay blocked at the ISP level. The idea is that when subscribers can’t access ‘pirates’ sites they will flock to legal alternatives.

While there can be little doubt that some will take the opportunity to test out Netflix or Spotify (should they be available in their region), other users will be less ready to take the plunge.

In Spain, where online piracy is reportedly more widespread than most other European countries, users faced a Pirate Bay problem on Friday when a judge ordered the country’s service providers to block the site within 72 hours.

Some ISPs blocked the site immediately, provoking questions of where to get free content now that The Pirate Bay is off-limits. Of course, there are plenty of alternatives but for those a little more determined, access to TPB was just a click or two away.

The problem is that for whatever reasons, thus far Spanish ISPs are only implementing a Pirate Bay ban on the most basic of levels. In the UK, for example, quite sophisticated systems block domain names and IP addresses, and can even automatically monitor sites so that any blocking counter-measures can be handled straight away. But in Spain users are finding that blocks are evaded with the smallest of tweaks.

By changing a computer or router’s DNS settings, Spaniards are regaining access to The Pirate Bay in an instant. Both Google’s DNS and OpenDNS are reported as working on several Spanish discussion forums.

“I’ve [followed the instructions] and in two minutes you can enter Pirate Bay. And I am a computer illiterate and have no idea what a DNS is,” a user of a gaming forum writes.

Another user, who moved away from his ISP’s DNS a while ago, wasn’t even aware that any block had been put in place.

“If the block is using DNS, I would not call that blocking, really. I’ve been using the DNS of Google for years and I have not even noticed anything,” he notes.

While Spaniards will be pleased that the blockade is easily circumvented, it’s the reaction to the news that’s perhaps the most interesting aspect. News that the site is being blocked is hardly being welcomed, but there is a definite absence of panic among those who are supposed to be some of Europe’s most hardcore pirates.

Whether that’s chiefly down to the weak blocking method being employed by some ISPs is up for debate, but having seen blocks do little to stop file-sharers across Europe – particularly in the UK where the practice is widespread – the Spanish probably see no real reason to break into a cold sweat just yet.