BPI Pleased With Pirate Ruling

The British Phonographic Industry is pleased that Internet service providers have been ordered to block access to BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.

Mr. Justice Arnold said April 30 he expects the blocking process to begin in the next few weeks. Arnold in February ruled that the operators as well as users of The Pirate Bay infringe the copyright of music companies.

“The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale,” said BPI chief exec Geoff Taylor.

“Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them.

“This is wrong – musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else,” he said.

A BPI statement said sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists.
So far the ruling applies to such major providers as Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media.

British Telecom, which has also been named in the case, has requested more time to deal with the original complaint lodged by the BPI at the end of last year.

However, Justice Arnold has already told BT to block access to Newzbin2, another filesharing website, and in the High Court he made it clear that he thinks the case against The Pirate Bay is even stronger.

The BPI began its action last July, when it asked The Pirate Bay to take down music that infringed its members’ copyrights.

When it didn’t get a response, it asked the ISPS to co-operate by blocking access to the site.

When that didn’t work, the BPI took them to court on the grounds that they were openly encouraging copyright theft.
Justice Arnold’s ruling has already drawn criticism from various open rights groups, largely because it will lead to more and even wider censorship of the internet.

Loz Kaye, leader of the The Pirate Party UK, a spin-off from the political movement that started in Sweden, told BBC News that he wasn’t surprised by the court ruling.

“The truth is that we are on a slippery slope towards Internet censorship here in the United Kingdom,” he said.