PirateBay block in UK by ISPs, court rules

[efq]

All I can say is that it'll be useless, unless you have no brains to get around.

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled.

The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly-pirated, free music and video.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site.

"Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists," the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said.

The BPI's chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "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."

Virgin Media told the BBC they will comply with the request, but warned such measures are, in the long term, somewhat ineffective.
"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."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17894176

[beth]

think virgin media have it totally spot on, there should be education and incentives to promote LEGAL downloading rather than just blocking off all illegal sources and thinking that'll force people into paying money, because it won't.

[peteyt]

The problem I think is this - Courts, the music, film etc. industry are spending so many time taking down sites when if they really want to stop it I think they should target the actual people uploading the illegal stuff. The problem is if you block one illegal site you just lead to another being launched and they can't keep up.

Obviously both ways won't stop illegal downloading but there's a lot of key teams out there that have been distributing illegal stuff including also cracked applications and games for ages. By blocking sites it just means that they will end up moving to another site. My worry is by forcing them to move to another site, they may end up uploading stuff on a site that doesn't tolerate illegal downloads - I mean look at YouTube it keeps removing stuff when asked to yet it's still being fined - what would happen if this happened to a small site just wanting to let people to upload legal stuff.

[efq]

The problem I think is this - Courts, the music, film etc. industry are spending so many time taking down sites when if they really want to stop it I think they should target the actual people uploading the illegal stuff. The problem is if you block one illegal site you just lead to another being launched and they can't keep up.

Obviously both ways won't stop illegal downloading but there's a lot of key teams out there that have been distributing illegal stuff including also cracked applications and games for ages. By blocking sites it just means that they will end up moving to another site. My worry is by forcing them to move to another site, they may end up uploading stuff on a site that doesn't tolerate illegal downloads - I mean look at YouTube it keeps removing stuff when asked to yet it's still being fined - what would happen if this happened to a small site just wanting to let people to upload legal stuff.

It's like impossible to take TPB down. The biggest nations and courts have tried but it's just impossible.

And I'm sure I heard that it isn't illegal in Sweden and seeing as they're mainly hosted there, therefore the US and rest of the world have no right or jurisdiction to take action over them. It's Sweden's job.

Anyone TPB is just an directory, it just actually store files does it?

[xxMATTGxx]

It's like impossible to take TPB down. The biggest nations and courts have tried but it's just impossible.

And I'm sure I heard that it isn't illegal in Sweden and seeing as they're mainly hosted there, therefore the US and rest of the world have no right or jurisdiction to take action over them. It's Sweden's job.

Anyone TPB is just an directory, it just actually store files does it?

No the actual content isn't hosted or stored by them. There will be ways around the block via proxies, VPN's and whatever else.

[efq]

No the actual content isn't hosted or stored by them. There will be ways around the block via proxies, VPN's and whatever else.

^Sorry I mean't "it doesn't store files etc"

Yup exactly, knowing TPB, they will provide some tool or method easy to everybody on how to avoid it. That's if you don't know, which most people do already.

[Recursion]

It's like impossible to take TPB down. The biggest nations and courts have tried but it's just impossible.

And I'm sure I heard that it isn't illegal in Sweden and seeing as they're mainly hosted there, therefore the US and rest of the world have no right or jurisdiction to take action over them. It's Sweden's job.

Anyone TPB is just an directory, it just actually store files does it?

TPB is just a directory and only provides links. It's also hosted around the world in multiple countries and no one knows exactly where all the pirate bay servers are.

Either way, this is an appalling decision and I hope some of the larger players will fight it, it's ridiculous to think this will stop piracy. The media industry are a) stuck so far in the past and b) so far up their own asses that they're slowly killing themselves.

[efq]

ISP's never have wanted to block piracy sites, hence why they never have by their own decision. It always takes the high court to force them to do it, and as respectable companies, they agree.

But they know better than anybody that doing this is pointless, hence why most of the leading ISP's comment on how such action would be a waste of time and only cause the ISP's problems with their customers.

[peteyt]

TPB is just a directory and only provides links. It's also hosted around the world in multiple countries and no one knows exactly where all the pirate bay servers are.

Either way, this is an appalling decision and I hope some of the larger players will fight it, it's ridiculous to think this will stop piracy. The media industry are a) stuck so far in the past and b) so far up their own asses that they're slowly killing themselves.

This is the problem however - SOPA and other acts want to prevent people who host anything illegal even links. Now at face value this can look okay but when you look into the deeper things - Like I mentioned YouTube of all people is apparently having to pay fines for illegal stuff that was posted on their site.

I'm all for stomping out illegal stuff - but there need's to be some kind of protection for sites who don't actually want people using their site illegally but have a massive audience and can't actually control them fully - I mean this goes back to YouTube I can't remember the exact figure but basically lots of stuff is uploaded onto YouTube every second which means it takes a lot of time for YouTube to actually go through it all and remove the bad stuff.

However - sites like YouTube do have to agree with the law - but the courts should understand how hard it is to monitor everything and they should if anything chase after the people uploading the stuff rather than the service.

I know people will probably be against that - but I kind of think it's the only way - it protects the site at least. I mean I run my own site and under SOPA if someone illegaly posted something on my old forum I could have actually being closed just for that (without even knowing they had posted it).

[Kieran]

How come BT doesn't have to do it? :S