The UK High Court has asked ISPs to block a batch of 53 websites accused of providing access to copyright-infringing and pirated content thereby taking the total number of blocked websites in the country – by court order – to 93.
The High Court has ordered the UK’s top six ISPs namely Sky, BT, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin to block their users’ access to 53 websites services, including BitSoup, IP Torrents, Isohunt, Sumotorrent, Torrentdb, Torrentfunk, Torrentz, Warez BB, Rapid Moviez and more.
As per the court’s order, visitors to any of the blocked services will get a message from their ISP explaining that their chosen site is not available.
Chris Marcich, President and Managing Director of the Motion Picture Association – which had made 32 of the requests – said that the ISP blockades are an effective and legitimate tool to deter online copyright infringement.
“Securing court orders requiring ISPs to block access to illegal websites is an accepted and legitimate measure to tackle online copyright infringement,” Marcich said.
“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,” he added.
Twenty-one of the site blocking requests was made by the BPI, a music industry group.
