Following a case brought by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the High Court has ordered that six major internet service providers (ISPs) must block their subscribers from accessing three file-sharing websites.
The BPI went after the sites last year, saying that they were infringing copyright on a “significant scale” and profiting illegally from distributing music without permission and without paying anything in royalties to the musicians, writers or producers who created it.
One of the ISPs is BT, which agrees that copyright infringement is wrong and is happy to comply with the court order. Another is Virgin Media, which stated that, as a responsible ISP, it will support the clear legal framework put in place to protect against copyright infringement. The other four ISPs are Sky, O2, EE and TalkTalk.
However, some critics say that such blocks, which have already been set up against sites like the Swedish-based The Pirate Bay and Newzbin, help no-one and that sales figures show that stopping access to the sites do not help artists.
In addition, data suggests that the blocking of The Pirate Bay had only had a short-term effect on the level of pirate activity online, with levels of peer-to-peer sharing returning to normal soon after.
That said, a recent report from a market research firm suggested there had been a large reduction in the number of users illegally downloading music as fans opted for legal sharing through sites like Spotify.
While those in favour of the move say that since this is the third significant High Court decision in two years ordering ISPs to block file-sharing websites under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, it demonstrates the perceived effectiveness of this route for file-holders.