British Telecom Taken to Court to Block Pirate Site

Published on 06-28-2011 03:33 PM

The MPA flexes it's muscles today by taking out an injunction that will force BT to block the popular newzbin.com website. The MPA are hoping to utilise the same technology used to block sites hosting child sex abuse images. BT is the largest ISP in the UK with more than 5.6 million customers, however it is also the supplier of a blocking system called Cleanfeed that is used by other big UK ISPs. Success in the courts may mean the blocking spreads to those other operators. More on the story here

6 Comments

sonyboy - 06-28-2011, 05:48 PM
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all i am gonna say here "PORT FORWARDIND SITES"

aktiv8 - 06-28-2011, 06:00 PM
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So if BT lose the case then perhaps an exodus by some users to other providers... BT should argue that anyone who disagrees with this Orwelian control could hurt their business, so the reduced revenue will impact on their ability to provide larger capacity broadband

TheFoX - 06-28-2011, 09:21 PM
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The main issue is that if BT blocks access to newzbin, it could be blocking access to free content as well. You cannot simply censor a whole network just because it hosts copyright infringing material, and to block newzbin irrespective would not be acceptably justifiable. If newzbin gets blocked, then who is next? Would this effectively be the end of news servers, because they can all host illegal content, or have the capacity to host illegal content. I can understand the reason for going after news servers, because you can kill many birds with one stone.

SonsOfLiberty - 06-29-2011, 02:05 AM
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http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/...locking-scheme Info is there.

duke0102 - 06-29-2011, 10:40 AM
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I guess this is going to be a 'walking on egg shells' case for BT, they can't come across as if there standing up for a well known pirate site but at the same time they can't be seen to be happily screwing there customers over. I think MPA pricks may have the upper hand on this one Thank god for TOR though lol