The latest salvo between the organizers of the popular BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay and their arch-enemiesorganizations trying to quash piracy in its many formatsreached new levels this week.

Just as soon as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) called on governments to make 2011 the year they, "turn the tide" against piracy, The Pirate Bay's backers announced that they're working on a mysterious new site that should make said governments' antipiracy pursuits just that much harder.

The Pirate Bay has held on to the domain "themusicbay.org" for a few years now, but only recently has the site sprung to life with a mysterious, "comming soon [sic]" title under the site's only working subdomain, fear.themusicbay.org. According to TorrentFreak, the domain was initially purchased as the first step in the process of researching new methods for online music distributionof the less-than-legal variety, of course.

Beyond the details that can be speculated from history, The Pirate Bay's anonymous organizers aren't saying much else.

"The music industry can't even imagine what we're planning to roll out in the coming months. For years they've complained bitterly about piracy, but if they ever had a reason to be scared it is now," said a Pirate Bay source in an interview with TorrentFreak. "It will be a special surprise for IFPI's 78th birthday, and we're thinking of organizing a huge festival in Rome where IFPI was founded."

Timing appears to be everything in this casethe IFPI's birthday is in April of this year, giving The Pirate Bay less than three months to get its site up and running. As well, it's hard to deny that the timing of the announcement itself looks aimed to steal a bit of thunder from the IFPI's annual Digital Music Report, released earlier this week for 2011.

"As we enter 2011, digital piracy, and the lack of adequate legal tools to fight it, remains the biggest threat to the future of creative industries. Great new legitimate music offerings exist all over the world, but they will not survive if the market continues to be massively rigged by piracy," writes IFPI CEO Frances Moore.

The IFPI currently supports a "graduated response" philosophy for thwarting piracy at the Internet service provider level. This would entail graduated levels of responseboth educational and punitiveto those found infringing copyrights on a given network. The culmination of such a plan would feature sanctions, including the loss of one's Internet access (akin to what's been previously proposed in France's "three-strikes" HADOPI law) for repeat violations.