Following in the steps of other courts around Europe, Finland's Court of Appeal has now confirmed that two ISPs previously ordered to block The Pirate Bay must continue doing so. With another ISP's appeal to the Supreme Court just rejected it now seems likely that anti-piracy company CIAPC has succeeding in its quest to deny 80% of the country direct access to the world's most infamous torrent site. But still the downloading continues.

Faced with a Pirate Bay that cannot easily be taken offine, in recent years anti-piracy companies have taken a different approach – disrupting Internet users’ access to the site instead.

This is currently being achieved (with varying results) through court action and subsequent ISP blockades in countries including the Netherlands, UK, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland and Italy.

One country that has seen more of this legal action than most is Finland. The reason for this is that unlike ISPs in the UK for example, ISPs in Finland have battled efforts to have The Pirate Bay censored, arguing that a better solution would be to bring legal offerings up to date.

But despite the efforts of the targeted ISPs (Elisa, TeliaSonera and DNA), following recent rulings including two in the last three days, the fight now seems all but lost.

The legal action to censor The Pirate Bay dates back to May 2011 when the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) and the Finnish branch of music industry group IFPI filed a lawsuit at the District Court.

The groups filed demands for Elisa to start blocking TPB. The ISP refused but a subsequent court order in October 2011 forced them to comply. In January 2012 the ISP implemented the blockade which remains in place today.

In November 2011, applications were filed to force two further ISPs – TeliaSonera and DNA – to take the same action as Elisa. Although these ISPs were also forced by the District Court to block The Pirate Bay, both took their cases to appeal.

The results of both of these cases are now in and it’s bad news for anti-censorship advocates. Last Friday the Helsinki Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the District Court and confirmed that DNA must continue blocking The Pirate Bay.

In a ruling this morning the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in the TeliaSonera case and the result is no better. The ISP must continue to block The Pirate Bay as ordered by the District Court in June 2012 or face fines amounting to 100,000 euros per day.

Both ISPs have the possibility of taking their cases to the Supreme Court but following recent events, success in that respect seems unlikely.

After the Court of Appeal ordered Elisa to keep blocking The Pirate Bay last year, the ISP asked the Supreme Court to take up their case. But in October 2012 the Supreme Court denied leave to appeal the June decision of the District Court. That meant that Elisa’s blockade must remain.

According to the IFPI the subscribers of Elisa, TeliaSonera and DNA combined make up 80% of the total broadband market in Finland, which suggests that 8 out of 10 subscribers can no longer access The Pirate Bay.

CIAPC believe that this ISP roadblock is enough to deter all but the most persistent of pirates, but chatter in file-sharing circles suggests that anyone with an interest knows how to circumvent the blockade and can now do so as easily as loading up a torrent.