A UK High Court judge has ordered Britain’s internet service provider, BT to block access to members-only file-sharing site Newzbin 2 — a website which provides links to pirated movies.
The judgment came following Motion Picture Association – which includes film studios Disney, Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox filed a case claiming that Newzbin website infringed their copyright with illegal file-sharing.
The website provides links to pirated versions of copyright works including films, TV programmes, commercial software and other content.
The site has around 700,000 members and while it does not host copyrighted content, it lists links where people can find films and TV programmes for free on the web.
In his ruling, Justice Arnold stated that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes.
BT and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which filed the case, will be back in court in October to work out how the blocking will work.
Motion Picture Association terms the ruling as victory adding that it will act as a precedent for other sites which allegedly flout copyright laws to be blocked by BT and other internet providers.
BT had argued the ban could usher in a new form of online censorship.
