Customers of Ireland's biggest ISP can no longer access The Pirate Bay. Earlier this year, Eircom settled out of court with Ireland's music industry and agreed to block the world's largest tracker and today, September 1st, the ban took effect. The site's domain names and IP addresses have all been blocked.

During August the music industry sent an email to several ISPs in Ireland, demanding that the companies block their users’ access to The Pirate Bay or face legal action.

While UPC and BT Ireland denied the request, Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP, already agreed and said it would block customer access to the site starting September 1st – today.

TorrentFreak can confirm that Eircom customers can no longer access The Pirate Bay and instead, are faced with this message when trying to access the site (body in plain text for clarity);

On the 24 July 2009, an Order was made by the High Court requiring eircom to block or otherwise disable access by its subscribers to the website ThePirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs. The Court was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence presented by the record companies that the PirateBay website is a website that facilitates the exchange of copyrighted sound recordings without the consent of the copyright owners. eircom recognises the legitimate rights of the owners of copyrighted material and believes that individuals who share or download copyrighted material without the authorisation or the permission of the copyright owner are acting illegally. The Order further provides that should the PirateBay website content be legitimatised in the future then eircom has liberty to apply to the Court to have the Order vacated and access to the PirateBay website enabled. eircom in compliance with the Order has agreed that access to the website the PirateBay.org, its related domain names, IP addresses and URLs from the eircom network will be blocked indefinitely from the 1st September 2009. eircom would like to reassure customers that: * eircom will not monitor customer’s activities at any stage, nor will it place any monitoring equipment or software on its network in order to facilitate this block.

* eircom will not provide personal details or any information relating to customers to any third party, including the record companies.

The order to which Eircom refers relates to one awarded after an uncontested hearing before the courts – mirroring its earlier weakness over “3 strikes”, Eircom had already agreed with IRMA, Ireland’s version of the RIAA, that it would not put up any resistance.

According to Irish Times, Eircom has also revealed it has signed a memorandum of understanding with EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner to develop a new online music service, with an aim to have it released before Christmas this year.