Earlier this month a UK High Court ordered Sky, Everything Everywhere, 02, Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk to block user access to the file sharing site, The Pirate Bay.
The file sharing site, features links which users can download from each other. It’s ranked as the 12 most visited website in Sweden and 77th in the world, according to Alexa Internet.
The site currently has over 5.5 million registered users and has over 4 million torrent files.
The order follows the ruling back in February where the UK high court ruled The Pirate bay violated copyright regulations. Justice Arnold said that Pirate bay was responsible for illegal activity on the site.
"In my judgment, the operators of TPB do authorise its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public," said Arnold. "They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. On any view, they sanction, approve, and countenance the infringements of copyright committed by its users. But in my view they also purport to grant users the right to do the acts complained of. It is no defence that they openly defy the rights of the copyright owners."
In a statement Sky said it agreed with the court order of blocking The Pirate Bay website.
"We have invested billions of pounds in high-quality entertainment for our customers because we know how much our customers value it," a spokesman said.
"It’s therefore important that companies like ours do what they can, alongside the government and the rest of the media and technology industries, to help protect their copyright. Such protection makes sure that consumers continue to benefit from TV programmes, movies and music both now and in the future. This means taking effective action against online piracy and copyright infringement."
Greg Mead, CEO of Musicmetric says he is uncertain if the methods that the ISPs are using to block access to the Pirate Bay website will actually have any effect.
"It remains to be seen if the DNS blocking methods used by the ISPs will be effective in reducing access to The Pirate Bay or other sites," said Mead earlier this month.
Less than 2 weeks ago The Pirate Bay launched a new IP address at 194.71.107.80 to help subscribers easily get around court ordered blockades in the UK, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands.
According to TorrentFreak, Pirate Bay is usually blocked in countries "by a domain and IP address filter," which Pirate Bay avoided by creating a new IP address.
The new IP address, however, was short lived in the UK as it was blocked less than a week after becoming available.
The Pirate Bay has over 5.5 million registered users and over 4 million torrent files.
Please follow this author on Twitter @Tineka_S or comment below.
