Torrent users have managed to defeat Australian internet service provider Telstra's move to block access to The Pirate Bay. The ISP becomes the first in the country to crack down on piracy and torrent sites following a federal court order.

Last week, the federal court had ruled that by the end of the year, over 50 ISPs have to deny access to select torrent pirate sites in Australia as it battles piracy concerns. Sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie will eventually be denied access in Australia, TorrentFreak reported.

The case against these pirate sites was brought to the court by Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia and 20th Century Fox.

Telstra was the first in ISP in Australia to follow the court's order and block access to the torrent sites. To start with, Telstra tried to block The Pirate Bay first.

However, the purpose of the court's order and that of Telstra remains defeated as users began to configure their computers to use Google's DNS instead of Telstra's. Many others are using OpenDNS as they believe that it logs less data than Google.

The court ruling allowed ISPs to choose their own ways to block the pirate sites from being accessed. And Telstra chose the weakest option available – using the DLC blocking.

The court said that ISPs can use any means that is approved by rightsholders like DNS blocking, IP address blocking (or IP re-routing), URL blocking, or "any alternative technical means."

The report notes that rightsholders have been lobbying for blocking of such sites for years and had finally succeeded with the recent federal court order.