Court orders UK ISPs to block more piracy sites
The BPI says blocking sites helps protect the revenue streams needed to create new music — The High Court has ordered the UK's major internet service providers to block three websites offering links to pirated material.
Context & Ripple Effects
The order extends the UK music industry’s court-led enforcement route after the 2012 ruling requiring ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. It follows the BPI’s earlier effort to press BT for a block and its move against a UK Pirate Party proxy, showing enforcement shifting from individual services toward the access points and workarounds around them.
First-order effects
- Major UK ISPs must restrict access to three additional sites that link users to pirated material, while the BPI gains another court-backed remedy for rights holders.
- Operators of link sites face a UK access barrier even where the underlying material is hosted elsewhere.
Second-order effects
- The BPI’s pursuit of a Pirate Bay proxy indicates that alternative access routes become the next enforcement target as ISP blocks limit named domains.
- UK ISPs become recurring implementation partners in copyright enforcement, rather than merely the networks through which disputed services are reached.
Third-order effects
- Repeated court orders point toward site blocking becoming a reusable copyright-enforcement mechanism, with disputes likely to move toward which intermediaries and circumvention tools fall within its reach.
The trend: UK music-industry enforcement is moving from action against individual file-sharing services toward court-ordered controls at the internet-access layer.