﻿ Sleepwalking into censorship: Pirate Bay faces UK web block | ZDNet

Sleepwalking into censorship: Pirate Bay faces UK web block

Summary: A UK court has effectively ruled file-sharing site The Pirate Bay as illegal, paving the way for ISP-level blocks to be enacted when a final judgement is made in June.

Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay could be blocked from the UK population after the High Court in London ruled that the site breaches copyright on a massive scale.

The move brings a block on the site to British residents one step closer.

In a judgement today, Mr. Justice Arnold who presided over the case, said that The Pirate Bay --- and its users --- infringe copyrighted content.

Music and film lobbying groups are now pushing for UK broadband providers to block the site. A ruling is expected in June as to whether ISPs should prevent its users from accessing the site.

In the judgement, Mr. Justice Arnold said: "the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting." He concluded that both the users and the operators or the site: "infringe the copyrights of the Claimants (and those they represent) in the UK".

Considering that some 3.7 million Britons use The Pirate Bay, according to comScore, it would be a massive hit to the freedom of the Web on British soil. Alexa ranks the file-sharing site, at the time of writing, as one of the top 100 websites in the world.

While BT and Sky, along with others, continue to oppose such measures as website blocking on its networks --- claiming that the cost of doing so would be passed onto the customers, and the foundation principles of the free and open Web are at risk --- industry groups are having greater success in legal action.

Music and film industry representatives have recently been successful in having file-sharing site Newzbin2 blocked by major Internet service providers in the country, including Sky and BT, which has over eight million users.

The courts forced broadband provider TalkTalk, which has over four million UK customers, was forced by the courts to block access to Newzbin2 after it lost a legal battle last month. Sky and Virgin Media, who have previously implied they would only comply with court orders, received written requests from the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in November 2011.

All it takes is one legal precedence in the UK and the floodgates are open to any given site. Because The Pirate Bay has been ruled as effectively 'illegal', it would be unlikely that anything less than a full ISP-level block would be set.

Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party UK, said: "This hearing clearly demonstrates the limitations of merely requiring judicial involvement in censorship orders." He added: "The UK is sleepwalking into comprehensive site blocking."

And because most of the UK online population is unaware that their online freedoms are being threatened, to say that we are "sleepwalking into censorship" is quite the case.

Image source: Flickr.


Topics: Telcos, Browser



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  • The battle is over, the war is beginning ...

    Now that the government has learned it can command the ISPs to do their bidding, I expect Web censorship will start ramping up in both the UK and the US. Just blocking the domains and IP addresses won't work, blocks are easily circumvented by existing technology and new techniques. The next step will be for governments to start outlawing use of technology, and circumvention itself will become a crime. You'll never need to download a single file, just having TOR or a torrent client on your machine will be enough for a conviction.

    The final step will be similar to what the authoritarian regimes having been striving to do: mandatory registration of all devices, built-in monitoring software, and whitelists to access only "approved" sites and material. I figure it's still twenty years out, but there have already been internal proposals to do some or all of these things in the name of security as well as corporate profit protection.

    Will the people stand for it? Yes. They have knuckled under repeatedly before, so it's now an ingrained habit.
    terry flores
    • RE: Sleepwalking into censorship: Pirate Bay faces UK web block

      @terry flores

      I think you're right & it's inevitable, bit like with automobiles, if everyone drove them safely and didn't use them to commit crime we wouldn't need licencing & registration, unfortunately that aint the case and the majority end up restricted because of the criminal minority. Same as it ever was.

    To infringe copyright, it's necessary to possess the actual item or at least be able to use it and modify it. Pirate Bay has no downloads, no copyright protected material. it merely tracks torrents. It's also just one in a plethora of trackers. As to restricting torrent traffic, a number of legal products are already distributed using this mechanism.

    Don't make a law you can't enforce...