Reddit storm imminent after UK Pirate Bay judgement

This week the British High Court has ruled that The Pirate Bay website and its users have been and continue to engage in “large-scale copyright infringement”, this very possibly leading to a requirement that UK internet providers ban the site outright soon. Should your website “actively promote copyright infringement” you may be facing the same fate in the near future as so-called piracy continues to be an issue throughout the western world amid crackdowns on sites such as Megaupload for uploading and sharing media illegally.

Members of the British music industry are currently pushing the government to require that The Pirate Bay be blocked by UK internet providers entirely, but appear to be completely oblivious to the storm which erupted just weeks ago after the SOPA and PIPA bills were judged by the social web. At a time in which sharing and the legal and illegal cloud storage and distribution of media are being hotly contested, this move is certainly going to feel the heat of the web as a whole once it’s understood that the implications of blocking one site entirely will have repercussions on the rest.

The idea that a single site can be blocked by a country is a concept that, in this editor’s opinion, should have been tossed out at the very origin of the web. Instead, Justice Arnold of the British High Court wrote the following:

“In my judgment, the operators of [The Pirate Bay] do authorise [BSP] its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. I conclude that both users and the operators of [The Pirate Bay] infringe the copyrights of the claimants … in the UK. [The Pirate Bay] take no steps to prevent infringement, [and instead] actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt.” – Arnold

The words read like an outraged housewife simply mortified that her son would disobey a direct order not to eat a candy bar before supper. Meanwhile the British Photographic Industry have spoken up an agreed with the judgement by the BCH saying it’s a victory for musicians and all creative industries in general. Geoff Taylor, chief executive of BPI, wrote the following in a statement:

“The high court today ruled that The Pirate Bay is illegal. The site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries. The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm.” – Taylor

There’s a difference between protecting the rights of artists and taking an entire country and burying its head in the sand so it can’t see the illegally downloadable content produced by the artists altogether. Please phone the government representative of your choice today, UK, and make sure that no website is blocked throughout your country. This is unjust and undeniably unfair to the free and open web.

[via Digital Trends]