UPD BPI Preparing to Ask Big UK ISPs to Block 25 More Internet Piracy Sites

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) appears to be preparing for another run of court orders after music licensing firm PPL revealed a new list of 25 website domains, which are all accused of facilitating copyright infringement (internet piracy), that the UK music body would like broadband ISPs to block.

A similar list of six domains was published by the PPL last year (here), which ultimately resulted in three more internet piracy sites (Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents) being blocked by BT, PlusNet, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband (O2) and EE under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

As before the BPI has requested that PPL poll its members about the sites in order to ensure that nobody has licensed any music to them. “In considering what next steps to take, BPI would like to know if any PPL record company members have, in the UK, licensed their recorded music to the operators of the below websites,” said a message from the BPI (credits to Torrentfreak).

The Targeted 25 BitTorrent/P2P/Cyberlocker/Piracy Sites
1337x
BitSnoop
ExtraTorrent
Isohunt
TorrentReactor
TorrentCrazy
Monova
Torrentdownloads
TorrentHound
Torrentz
Filestube
Filecrop
Filetram
Rapidlibrary
Grooveshark
BeeMP3
Dilandau
MP3juices
MP3lemon
MP3raid
MP3skull
Abmp3
Bomb-mp3
Emp3world
Newalbumreleases

It’s worth pointing out that the BPI might not necessarily target all of the sites at the same time, especially since several are quite contentious and could fight back (e.g. Grooveshark). Similarly, of the 6 sites mentioned by the PPL last year, it’s interesting to note that Extratorrent, Demonoid and TorrentReactor were never pursued but they are still included on the latest list.

History suggests that the BPI will first call upon the markets largest ISPs to voluntarily block some or all of the listed websites, which has usually been opposed. After that the music body will most likely seek an injunction to do so through the courts and previous cases have already helped to streamline this process.

The BPI firmly believes that “the growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music without a licence from the copyright holders” and web-blocking has so far been its primary way of fighting back, at least until the Digital Economy Act finally gets going sometime next year (if it ever gets going).

On the other hand several studies have questioned the effectiveness of such blocks and noted that those who actively seek copyright content will always find a way around the skin deep restrictions that ISPs impose. We discussed this last year as part of our in-depth article – How to Keep Your Data Private and Browse the Internet Anonymously.

Meanwhile others believe that the very public efforts to pursue related sites could also end up promoting their existence and thereby fuelling the problem. Unfortunately once people go underground then the scale of this issue quickly becomes very difficult to track.

UPDATE 16th May 2013

Interesting video on this development from eastern news-channel Russia Today.