"We asked the sites to stop infringing copyright but unfortunately they did not and we were left with little choice but to apply to the court," said Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive.
The court order mandated that all the sites must be blocked in the UK by today (Wed, Oct 30). The full list of sites to be blocked is as follows:
- Abmp3
- BeeMP3
- Bomb-Mp3
- FileCrop
- FilesTube
- Mp3Juices
- eMp3World
- Mp3lemon
- Mp3Raid
- Mp3skull
- NewAlbumReleases
- Rapidlibrary
- 1337x
- BitSnoop
- ExtraTorrent
- Monova
- TorrentCrazy
- TorrentDownloads
- TorrentHound
- Torrentreactor
The practice of enforcing blocklists on ISPs is the latest tactic in the fight against Internet piracy, though the practice of state-enforced censorship is facing predictable criticism. It has also led to the growth of censorship-sidestepping measures, such as using the portable PirateBrowser (or alternatively the TOR Browser that is it based on) which makes websites blocked in this way reachable in most cases.