UK high court doubles the number of blocked piracy websites to restrict mass copyright violations
The UK has seen a further clampdown on piracy with internet service providers providing access to fewer sites as a result of a high court ruling.
The Pirate Bay was blocked in 2012 but remains widely available
In its latest bid to prevent illegal file-sharing, the UK government has issued a ban on 53 websites -most of which are peer-to-peer networks.
The ban will be adopted by the country’s six leading ISPs, Sky, BT, EE, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin with the ruling bringing the total number of restricted sites to 93.
However, as happened with the last ban in 2012, proxy sites granting users access to the services emerged almost immediately. Sites blocked include BitSoup, IP Torrents, Isohunt, Sumotorrent, Torrentdb, Torrentfunk, Torrentz, Warez BB and Rapid Moviez.
A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association, the group behind 32 of the takedown requests, told the BBC: “Securing court orders requiring ISPs to block access to illegal websites is an accepted and legitimate measure to tackle online copyright infringement.
“It carefully targets sites whose sole purpose is to make money off the back of other people's content while paying nothing back into the legitimate economy.”
In October, Google was lobbied to up its crackdown on file-sharing sites by advertising trade body, the ISBA.