ISPs Told To Block More Torrent Sites

Yet more torrent sharing sites are to be blocked by major UK ISPs, thanks to a court order cracking down on two pirate sites.

TV torrent site EZTV and movie torrent provider YIFY are the latest to be banned, although web users often find ways around blocks by using proxies or VPNs.

Torrent crackdown

The order was made after action by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Motion Picture Association, who have both been busy cracking down on websites giving access to copyrighted material without permission.

The court order has not yet been made public, according to TorrentFreak, but is believed to be similar to the one that hit The Pirate Bay. That one saw all major ISPs, including BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk and others, told to stop its members accessing the site.

The Pirate Bay later claimed it had seen a traffic spike rather than a decline following the order, largely because users were running through proxy servers, one of which was set up by the Pirate Party.

“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,” FACT said.

In March, the High Court ordered five ISPs block three popular peer-to-peer file-sharing resources – Kickass-Torrents, Fenopy and H33T. Two months later, Movie 2K and Download4All were blocked.

Arrgh! How much do you know about online piracy? Take our quiz!