UK ISPs forced to censor access to The Pirate Bay

The Royal Courts of Justice, London

The UK High Court has today ruled that internet service providers (ISPs) operating in the UK must censor access to file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are expected to block access to the Swedish file sharing site within weeks. Britain’s largest ISP, BT, has requested “a few more weeks” to consider their its position on this.

The British Phonographic Industry had requested the group of ISPs voluntarily censor access to The Pirate Bay back in November 2011. However, when all ISPs rejected this the BPI began court proceedings that eventually culminated in today’s decision.

Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP, has already had a similar blockade in place since September 2009, although this was achieved by way of an out-of-court settlement between Eircom and the four major record labels EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner.

Virgin Media, one of the ISPs affected by today’s court order believes that BPI’s approach to tackling copyright infringement is short-sighted and only part of the solution.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”

Rights groups have warned that such internet censorship measures are “pointless and dangerous” and only “fuel calls for further, wider and even more drastic calls for internet censorship”. After all, the arguably feigned blocking mechanisms that ISPs are forced to put in place can be easily circumvented using free and readily available proxy services.

Nevertheless, court proceedings do highlight very clearly and rightly the illegal nature of such file sharing website.

Source: BBC News