[x-pubpol] UK: Virgin Media Blocks File-Sharing Site After Receiving Court Order

[Joly MacFie]

(via KK)

http://torrentfreak.com/virgin-media-blocks-file-sharing-site-after-receiving-court-order-120814/

After holding out on a Hollywood request to block a file-sharing site,
Virgin Media has finally been forced to comply. The UK ISP said it would
only block the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site if ordered to do so by a
court. Now, more than a year after the High Court told ISP BT to initiate a
blockade against the movie industry target, Virgin Media has been ordered
to do the same.

In what would become a pioneering battle to have a file-sharing site
blocked at the ISP level in the UK, last year ISP BT found itself taking on
the might of the major Hollywood studios.

The Motion Picture Association were seeking a High Court injunction
ordering BT to block subscriber access to Newzbin2, a site they say causes
the industry significant losses by helping people to locate movies and TV
shows on the Usenet binaries system. The MPA won.

“In my judgment it follows that 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<http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-forces-uk-isp-to-block-newzbin-usenet-site-110728/>
Justice
Arnold in the High Court last July.

In October 2011 the parties returned to
court<http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isp-bt-given-14-days-to-block-newzbin2-111026/>
and
BT was given just 14 days to use its Cleanfeed censorship system to block
subscriber access to Newzbin2.

However, unlike this year’s blockade of The Pirate Bay, only BT were
affected by the High Court order. The MPA had asked other ISPs to
voluntarily block Newzbin2 following the ruling but they refused. In
December 2011, ISP SKY confirmed that they had received an
order<http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/broadband/protecting-copyright/>
to
block Newzbin2 and in early January 2012 an order was issued for TalkTalk
to block access.

All this time Virgin Media, a company that has a monopoly on cable Internet
access in the UK, had continued to provide access to Newzbin2. That will
soon change.

“We’ve received an order from the courts requiring us to prevent access to
Newzbin in order to help protect against copyright infringement,” the
company announced yesterday.

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to
us, but we strongly believe that changing consumer behaviour to tackle
copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives to give
consumers access to great content at the right price.”

At the time of writing, Newzbin2 remains accessible through Virgin Media
and the ISP has not indicated how long it has been given to comply with the
court order. Spokesman for Newzbin2 Mr.White said that he believes the
block will kick in today.

When The Pirate Bay was blocked earlier this year, dozens of proxy sites
popped up that gave UK Internet subscribers plenty of options to continue
getting access to the torrent resource. Newzbin2, probably due to its lower
profile, did not receive the same level of support, although the operators
did release their own encryption
software<http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-release-encrypted-client-to-defeat-website-blocking-110914/>
to
allow users to circumvent bans. It received its latest
update<https://www.newzbin2.es/n2cdl> last
week

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