Britain's High Court has ordered Internet service providers in the U.K. to block all access to the BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay (TPB). The court sided with a group of music labels, including EMI, Polydor, Sony, Virgin, and Warner Music, which claimed that TPB infringes their copyrights. One of the ISPs, Virgin Media -- a sibling of one of the music labels that filed the lawsuit -- predicted that the blockade will have little effect until the entertainment industry develops alternatives to its current business models, "such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price." TPB also scorned the court decision, saying, "This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising." British users who are blocked directly from accessing TPB may do so by purchasing a so-called virtual private network. (The Pirate Bay itself sells such a service called iPredator.) Meanwhile, the London Daily Mail is advocating that access to porn sites be blocked as well. It quoted Helen Goodman, a media spokesperson for the Labor party as saying, "Large businesses are able to enforce their rights through the courts because they can afford to. But parents wanting to protect their children don't have this option. This is why the government needs to step in on the side of ordinary people."

01/05/2012