Posted: Fri., Jun. 5, 2009, 5:44pm PT

Pirate Bay heads to Venice art Biennale

File-sharing site sets up 'Embassy of Piracy'

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Call them Pirates of the Lagoon. A recent jail sentence and multimillion-dollar fine don't seem to have taken much wind out of the sails of notorious Swedish file-sharing site the Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay organizers disembarked amid fanfare at the prestigious June 3-8 Venice art Biennale and adjacent lagoon and set up an "Embassy of Piracy" within the exhibit's unofficial Internet Pavilion, offering "piracy labs" to the public. It was a clear challenge to Italian authorities with which they have clashed in the past.

The artistic part of their lagoon stunt consisted of an appeal to download and print foldable paper pyramid models, called embassies, from their website.

Provocation comes as a grassroots Pirate Bay political party is gaining consensus in Sweden in the run-up to European elections. Meanwhile, U.K. Media Minister Andy Burnham pledged June 2 to step up cooperation with the U.S. against illegal downloads of music, films and TV shows.

But, signaling a somewhat soft stance, the Blighty pol cautioned he doesn't want to "criminalize young people who have just gotten used to enjoying music in new ways."