GB Court orders BT to block pirate links website

(It will happen here in the US soon, too. --jef)

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28th July, 2011 by Henna Butt

A High Court judge has ruled that BT, Britain’s largest ISP must block access to Newzbin 2, a website, which like many others provides links to pirated movies.

This is a landmark case in that an ISP has not previously been asked to block a website of this nature. This ruling will provide precedent for further action to be taken with different ISPs in order to block the vast numbers of similar websites that provide links to pirated material.

Justice Arnold stated: “In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes.”

The legal action was launched by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) who celebrated the ruling as a victory for people working in creative industries.

The digital rights organisation the Open Rights Group argued that the ruling could set a “dangerous” precedent, challenging the freedom and openness upon which the Internet has been built.

“There are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown. If the goal is boosting creators’ ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand,” said ORG campaigner Peter Bradwell.

Once a ruling allows the blocking of a website then questions in future will arise over the conditions which make a site worthy of being blocked and it is this potential for ‘gagging’ that we must be wary of.