The British Court has ruled that UK ISPs must block access to the popular file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay.
Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media must all now prevent their users from accessing the file-sharing site, which includes many torrent links to pirated movies, music and TV shows.
Virgin Media told the BBC that it would comply with the court order, but seemed mightily unimpressed with the judgement:
"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."
BT, Britain’s largest ISP, was also ordered to ban access to The Pirate bay, but has requested extra time to determine how best implement the block.
ISPs typically argue that policing copyright infringement is not their job, and that they should not have to shoulder the costs of implementing web censorship on their customers.
Although many British consumers will be unhappy with the news, there’s one group who will be delighted with the development – the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
BPI chief Geoff Taylor welcomed the court’s decision:
"The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."
The Pirate Bay is believed to have some three million British users.
…My thoughts? Anyone who frequently uses TPB knows about their firefox plugins & mirrors designed to maintain access to the site in the event of censorship. None of us care two bits about what I’m sure the British court is quickly realizing wasn’t the cleverest thing Brits have come up with since the elevator. And the media industries? When will they realize that people don’t downloaded pirated material because it’s free, but because they can? It’s an internet mentality the old farts from the RIAA can’t relate to.
Anyway, I wish the music industry lots of luck as they sit around waiting for the massive cash flow they must be expecting from this censorship. And while they’re waiting, I think I’ll have some lunch.
ZionOps 