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The High Courts have today ordered BT to block access to a pirate website in a landmark ruling.
According to the Register, the High Courts ruled that BT was directly responsible for taking action against the Newzbin2 website under section 97A of the Copyright Act. The judge also refused to refer the case to the European courts.
“BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the Studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes,” said the presiding judge, Mr. Justice Arnold.
“It knows that the users of Newzbin2 include BT subscribers; and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin2.”
Given that this is a test case, the Motion Picture Association has stated that, if successful, it intends to bring similar orders against all other ISPs in the UK.
