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A collection of music and film publishers has asked British ISP BT to block access to The Pirate Bay following an earlier legal victory compelling the telco to block access to Newzbin2.
Industry bodies including the BPI and MPA wrote to BT asking the UK’s largest ISP to voluntarily block access to the infamous illegal filesharing web site.
"The BPI, supported by the UK creative industries, has written to BT asking it to block the Pirate Bay voluntarily," said the British music industry body in a release.
BT acknowledged the receipt of the letter but said that it would not voluntarily comply with third party requests to block access to web sites and that a court order would be required.
Given the newzbin2 ruling, such a court order seems likely to be granted. BT was legally compelled to use the firm’s anti-pornography filter Clean Feed to block access to the newzbin2 site, a move that is likely to have had minimal effect on those determined to access it.
Perhaps seeking to avoid a storm of similar requests, BT themselves pointed out that users could simply bypass the firm’s Cleanfeed filter via proxies or VPNs.
"We can enforce a court order, but if people find ways around our Cleanfeed technology, there’s nothing we can do about that," a BT spokesman told ZDNet.
