A day after UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt urged online advertising firms, search companies and credit card companies to shun websites that help the spread of pirated material, Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 has claimed that it is developing a softawre that will allow vistors to circumvent the blocking of the website that exists since July.
Newzbin2 is a member-only website, allegedly providing access to pirated movies and music. It has relocated its base to outside the UK after a court case earlier this year.
In July, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) had ordered BT to block access to Newzbin2 after legal action. The MPA had claimed that the Newzbin2 site indexes pirated movies and music on Usenet discussion boards, according to the BBC.
The block, expected to go into effect in mid-October, is to be enforced via BT’s Cleanfeed system, usually used to prevent access to sites that have pornography content of underage people.
Newzbin2 says its programmers have found a way to beat the blocking system.
Yesterday, while delivering a speech to the Royal Television Society, Hunt laid out his priorities in the next communications act, due to become law towards the end of the current Parliament in 2015.
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He said that companies should work with the government to make it harder for illegal piracy sites to prosper. Hunt also denied accusations that blocking access to pirated content amounted to an attack on net neutrality.
"Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft – and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts," he said.
"We do not allow certain products to be sold in the shops on the High Street, nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products. Likewise we should be entitled to make it more difficult to access sites that are dedicated to the infringement of copyright," he added.
