By: MarkJ - 15 February, 2012 (7:12 AM) - Score: 1988 - Piracy

Customers of budget broadband ISP TalkTalk have this week joined those of BT and Sky Broadband (BSkyB) in having their access to the controversial Newzbin (Newzbin2) piracy website blocked. The unsurprising move follows last year's warning letter (here) by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which was sent to all of the largest ISPs.

The letter itself referenced a July 2011 ruling in the High Court of Justice (London), which ordered (injunction) BT to block the site under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (here). That same ruling can be applied to other ISPs, at least so long as they have the technology to implement it.

In fairness it's good that an independent court of law was used to test the Newzbin case alongside an existing finding of infringement. However the European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently ruled that imposing such blocks upon ISPs could be "illegal" under EU law (here), which has yet to be tested in the UK.

Rights Holders believe that the "comprehensive and unequivocal [BT] judgment sets a clear legal precedent" and could be used against other websites and ISPs in the future. In reality this would be an expensive process and that's why the government has been attempting to work with ISP on a Voluntary Code solution (here), which should be officially revealed soon and would only target the biggest offenders (e.g. The Pirate Bay).

As ever the fact that any form of website blocking imposed by an ISP is easily circumvented through a number of easy and well known end-user solutions (vpn, proxy servers, dns changes etc.) continues to be overlooked. Credits to James Firth for pointing out the development.