UK Court Forces Big ISPs to Block 21 New P2P Torrent Websites

As expected several major record labels and trade bodies, including the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Sony Music and Universal Music etc., have successfully won multiple court orders that will force all of the country’s largest broadband ISPs to block their customers from accessing 21 P2P Torrent (BitTorrent) indexes, which were found to be facilitating Internet copyright infringement (piracy).

The move has been a long time coming, largely because it ended up being stalled as a result of the recent Trade Mark infringement case against another batch of websites that were known to be selling counterfeit goods. But that case was resolved just over one week ago (here) and thus the rest have been able to proceed, culminating in today’s news.

As usual the record companies first put in a voluntary request with the ISPs to get the 21 sites blocked, which is largely symbolic and usually refused, and they then proceeded to seek an injunction (court order) against the providers by using Section 97A of the United Kingdom’s well-used Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. The ISPs did not appear to contest this, which again is fairly normal.

The 21 Torrent Sites for UK ISPs to Block (Suffix Redacted)

bittorrent.**
btdigg.**
btloft.**
bts.**
limetorrents.***
nowtorrents.***
picktorrent.***
seedpeer.**
torlock.***
torrentbit.***
torrentdb.**
torrentdownload.**
torrentexpress.***
torrentfunk.***
torrentproject.***
torrentroom.***
torrents.***
torrentus.**
torrentz.**
torrentzap.***
vitorrent.***

Interestingly the Judge, Mr Justice Arnold, highlighted data from comScore that claimed to show how the number of UK visitors to blocked sites had declined by 87%. But he admitted that this data might not reflect those who are simply circumvention the block, which is incredibly easy to do, yet he appeared to be of the belief that not all users do this.

Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive, said (TorrentFreak):

“Illegal sites dupe consumers and deny artists a fair reward for their work. The online black market stifles investment in new British music, holds back the growth of innovative legal services like Spotify and destroys jobs across Britain’s vital creative sector.

Sites such as these also commonly distribute viruses, malware and other unsafe or inappropriate content. These blocks will not only make the internet a safer place for music fans, they will help make sure there is more great British music in years to come.”

Major ISPs like Sky Broadband, BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media usually implement related blocks within a couple of weeks from receipt of the court order, so you can expect a big warning to appear over each of the above within the not too distant future.

A related news story published earlier this week revealed that it can cost Rights Holders around £14,000 to get a single website blocked, while the on-going costs for both ISPs and Rights Holders are also becoming more expensive as more blocks are added (details).

But this certainly won’t be the last batch of websites to be blocked and we’re expecting to see more in the future. Meanwhile music revenues haven’t shown much of an improvement over their normal baseline (here).