Greed….It Never Ends??

BPI to Ban More BitTorrent Portals

The new targets of the BPI are Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents. The group’s Director of Communications, Adam Liversage, announced that the entertainment industry’s ally is currently seeking court orders which require the major UK broadband providers – BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, Everything Everywhere and TalkTalk to block access to the aforementioned file-sharing website.

Almost a year ago, BPI successfully obtained a favorable decision by the British High Court which ordered British Internet service providers to block access to the TPB. Today the outfit is pushing for more. In response, the Open Rights Group published comments to the outfit’s hunting announcement, claiming that website blocking is definitely an extreme response. The consumer outfit fears that such precedent would make it too easy and quick to block websites and suggests that time needs to be taken to consider the legitimate use of the targeted portals.

The Open Rights Group also pointed out that there needs to be a more specific and adequate definition of the precise URL or IP address to be banned. After the industry blocks a portal, its alleged clone websites can also be blocked. However, in this case, the British Phonographic Industry will be able to do so without a court order. The matter is that such decisions would be made between the outfit and broadband providers and won’t be published.

In the meanwhile, blocking of these portals doesn’t come with an expiry date, which makes this indefinite blocking problematic in case the number of websites blocked keep growing, thus leaving a huge number of websites hidden from the public.

Industry observers believe that the court hearings between a judge, broadband providers and copyright owners don’t sufficiently represent the needs of Internet users because their voice isn’t included during the hearing.

The Open Rights Group is not going to intervene in this particular case, but claims that it’s likely to do so in the future because of the lack of user rights being represented.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for the source of the article