UK Will Order More ISPs To Block The Pirate Bay

The BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), the voice of the British recorded music bizz, is reported to make desperate efforts of extending its Internet-blocking policy about The Pirate Bay onto other largest broadband providers, including TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Sky, O2, and Orange.

The British Recorded Music Industry outfit officially demanded BT to block access to the “rogue” website known as The Pirate Bay – the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker. This may invoke the MPA against BT case – a well-known and debatable lawsuit which managed to set a precedent in the fight against piracy thanks to the court’s decision to order BT to block access to Newzbin service.

As if it wasn’t enough, now the music industry, with the help of multiple industry trade outfits, wishes that BT would voluntarily restrict access to The Pirate Bay website without court injunction. Meanwhile, if the Internet service provider fails to comply with the requirement, it’s likely that the British Recorded Music Industry would seek justice in the court of law by obtaining the required injunction.

Taking into account the fact that the current censorship system should be extended onto other Internet service providers as well, the anti-piracy outfit has now extended its main objective, that of blacklisting The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker, to all of major broadband providers of the United Kingdom. The outfit issued a statement, saying that it is engaging in further dialogue with the Internet service provider BT on this issue. The organization also admitted that it has written to the UK’s other largest broadband providers – Virgin Media, O2, Orange, Sky, and TalkTalk – to ask them to block access to the BitTorrent tracker. Now the outfit is waiting for their responses.

UK MPAA Pressuring ISPs To Block File-Sharing Services

Recently, BT – one of the largest broadband providers in the country – has been forced to block the famous file-sharing site Newzbin2. However, the story doesn’t seem to be coming to an end with the court ruling: while the service keeps struggling by developing more and more way to circumvent the ban, two other UK’s Internet service providers, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, feel the pressure from the UK’s Motion Picture Association to block the news site as well.

Just a week ago MPA, a large movie industry watchdog, has sent TalkTalk and Virgin Media letters saying that the outfit would obtain the court orders demanding to impose the block and asked such an order would be opposed in some way, according to the local media reports.

As for the recipients of the letters, both of the Internet service providers admitted that they will comply to such blocking order if the court rules so. In the interview regarding this issue, Virgin Media explained that the company believed such deterrents should be accompanied by really compelling legal alternatives, like their agreement with the largest online streaming service Spotify that provided their consumers access to the copyrighted material at the reasonable price. As for TalkTalk, this broadband provider was noticed to fight against the introduction of the UK’s copyright legislation (Digital Economy Act), which imposed very strict anti-piracy rules.

This decision followed the story of the BPI (the British Phonographic Industry) demanding BT to prevent its subscribers from accessing the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, pointing at the Newzbin2 ruling as a precedent.