Finnish band Älymystö are furious at local anti-piracy groups after their action forced The Pirate Bay to become blocked by several of the country's largest Internet providers. The band, which has been around for more than a decade, views BitTorrent sites as a valuable form of promotion. To counter the blockades, Älymystö are now showing their fans how easy it is to circumvent the censorship attempt.

Finland is one of many European countries where The Pirate Bay is censored.

May last year the Finnish branch of the music industry body IFPI and the local Anti-Piracy Center filed a lawsuit against Elisa, the second largest Internet provider in the country. The ISP lost the case and was ordered to block subscriber access to TPB, a ruling they are now taking to the Supreme Court.

The anti-piracy groups, meanwhile, moved on to other ISPs and this week Sonera began blocking the torrent site after a court order, and was soon followed by DNA.

While IFPI and the local Anti-Piracy Center see the rulings as a blessing for the entertainment industry and artists worldwide, this view is not shared by everyone in the music industry. In fact, the Finnish band Älymystö – whose lead singer is the director of the popular movie Iron Sky – calls the blockades “insane.”

Like thousands of other independent artists, Älymystö sees The Pirate Bay as an important service through which they can promote their work. Blocking the site hurts their ability to reach more fans, which may result in reduced income in the long run.

“We don’t want the courts to mess with our Pirate Bay based promotion,” Älymystö’s Janos Honkonen tells TorrentFreak. “We’ve embraced the Internet since the beginning. Our stuff is on sale in most of the web stores, but it’s also been up for grabs as a torrent and a direct download.”

Because of the blockade, potential fans can no longer download their work, but luckily the band has a solution.

In an article on their website Älymystö shows that it’s not that hard to get around the block. They link to the piraattilahti.org website and also mention a list of other proxies that allow fans to bypass the blockade. In addition, the band mentions that VPNs are a good option to access The Pirate Bay.

Besides from hurting the band’s promotion, Älymystö points out that blocking sites such as The Pirate Bay is an ineffective solution to begin with. According to them, the entertainment industry should focus on offering a better service to consumers instead.

“The only way to fight piracy is to create systems that make it easy to sell music, movies and TV programs digitally with as little lag and friction as possible in international markets, to take care of your fans and customers and to cultivate good PR,” they say.

The example above once again shows when it comes to blocking The Pirate Bay, the interests of the major labels can be quite different from those of independent artists.

Interestingly, the music industry groups are not completely oblivious to this issue. Preparing for more UK blockades, the BPI polled its members and affiliated groups last month to find out whether any of the musicians had “licensed” their work to BitTorrent sites.

Whether protests from smaller bands will be heard by the major labels is doubtful though.