Pointless site blocking continues in the UK

‘Quick, look like you're busy,' continues to be the unspoken rule over at media lobbyists like Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) which has continued alongside the BPI to have websites blocked in the UK, because of their links with pirated content – despite the fact that all evidence suggests that blocks have no effect on levels of piracy and in fact can even hurt smaller and medium movie studios.

Yify-Torrents, PrimeWire, Vodly, WatchFreeMovies and Project Free TV have all now been blocked by the big six ISPs in the UK, after a court order was issued following a legal complaint by FACT. According to its response to TorrentFreak, it did ask the website owners to voluntarily remove the copyright protected content, but when that was refused, it went down the legal route.

Source: TorrentFreak

Customers of BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk will now no longer be able to access those websites, unless of course they use one of the hundreds of proxy sites available, or a VPN or a variety of other IP spoofing/hiding methods. Similarly smaller ISP users, like those connected to Plus.net, will not have been affected.

In a statement, a FACT spokesperson said: “We have made it clear that we will seek action against sites that continue to provide unremitting mass access to infringing content following due legal process.”

Seen here, the only block a gamer respects. Source: CutToPieces

These blocks follow on a trend from last year which saw The Pirate Bay blocked in several countries around Europe. However ISPs soon reported that the block had actually resulted in higher levels of traffic to the site, thanks to all the publicity and the fact that the site remained easily accessible through proxies and other means.

KitGuru says: And here we are over a year later with these organisations still justifying their multiple-millions in budgets and CEO salaries by making these big blocks, as they sound effective and are easy to achieve now that the ISPs know there's no point in fighting them, but really they achieve very little. 

Netflix and Spotify have done more to curb piracy than blocks have ever done. 

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