UPDATE2 Big UK ISPs Set to Block 21 Internet Piracy Websites on Wednesday

A leaked report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has revealed a raft of new Internet piracy facilitating websites that are to be blocked by six of the United Kingdom’s largest broadband ISPs, most of which could be censored as early as tomorrow (30th October 2013).

The “notorious sites” report, which TorrentFreak claims was recently submitted to the US Trade Representative (USTR), appears to confirm that a mass of sites including but not limited to ExtraTorrent, BitSnoop, Torrentz and FilesTube will shortly all be blocked by the UK’s major ISPs. Lest we not forget that the City of London Police recently managed to have the domains for SumoTorrent, MisterTorrent and ExtraTorrent suspended (as usual some of them simply moved elsewhere).

In addition many of the sites have been on a Rights Holders hit-list since last year (here) and the latest May 2013 report from music licensing firm PPL revealed a full list of 25 websites that copyright holders apparently wanted to tackle (here), which included most of those listed above.

The usual approach of Rights Holders is to first request a voluntary block of the website(s), which is normally refused by ISPs. The Rights Holders then seek a court ordered injunction under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (the same tactic they used to get The Pirate Bay and many others blocked), which is later served upon the ISPs.

At the time of writing ISPreview.co.uk has requested clarification from several ISPs to find out whether or not the above report is accurate. A spokesperson for Sky Broadband told us that they could only “confirm blocks once they have been implemented” and that if any are imposed then the blocks will be listed here: http://help.sky.com/../our-approach-to-protecting-copyright/ . Meanwhile Virgin Media have promised to investigate and we hope to have their reply shortly. We are also awaiting a response from several other ISPs.

However critics of Internet filtering systems and their use to tackle copyright infringement often warn that such approaches remain easy to circumvent and may thus only serve to promote the existence of such websites.

UPDATE 11:27am

Here’s the official confirmation.

A Virgin Media Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’ve received court orders requiring us to block a further 21 file-sharing sites found to be infringing on copyright. As a responsible ISP we obey court orders addressed to the company.”

UPDATE 12:01pm

According to Virgin Media the full list of sites to be blocked is as follows.

1. Abmp3
2. BeeMP3
3. Bomb-Mp3
4. eMp3World
5. FileCrop
6. FilesTube
7. Mp3Juices
8. Mp3lemon
9. Mp3Raid
10. Mp3skull
11. NewAlbumReleases
12. Rapidlibrary
13. 1337x
14. BitSnoop
15. ExtraTorrent
16. Monova
17. TorrentCrazy
18. TorrentDownloads
19. TorrentHound
20. Torrentreactor
21. Torrentz