BT took its time in blocking the Pirate Bay but it has finally complied with the court order and shuttered access to the site.
The block actually came into effect midday yesterday but the company kept quiet on the block going up. When we spoke to BT, all we were told was the following:
“BT has been given a court order requiring us to block access to the Pirate Bay. We have now put in place the measures to do this.”
Anyone attempting to access The Pirate Bay on a BT Broadband connection will now see an “Error – site blocked” message.
Recombu Digital understands that this block is the result of separate negotiations with the BPI and two months of work. BT wouldn’t go into technical details on the nature of the blocking measures. But we understand from previous conversations that the block is more comprehensive than simply restricting access to www.thepiratebay.se.
The High Court ruled in February that The Pirate Bay was illegally infringing the BPI members’ copyright and issued a court order to Virgin Media, Sky, O2, Be, Everything Everywhere and TalkTalk in April. BT applied for more time to negotiate with the BPI.
Virgin Media was the first ISP to respond to the court order, and copped a DDoS broadside from Anonymous for its troubles. The attack took Virgin Media’s site offline temporarily.
Later Sky, O2 and Be Broadband complied, along with TalkTalk, which restricted access to the ‘Bay last week.
The Pirate Bay, which normally posts a response to ISP blocks on its Facebook page has yet to say anything directly about BT’s ban, but had posted a link to a story about Indian ISPs unblocking BitTorrent in the face of a similar court order, commenting: “As far as we know, none of the British ISP’s have yet appealed. Shame on you for bending over so easily!”
Leave a Reply