Customers of UPC, Imagine, Digiweb, Vodafone, Three and O2 will be unable to access The Pirate Bay within 30 days.

Customers of UPC, Imagine, Digiweb, Vodafone, Three and O2 will be unable to access The Pirate Bay within 30 days.

SIX IRISH INTERNET service providers have been ordered by the High Court to block access to The Pirate Bay website.

The companies behind internet providers UPC, Imagine, Digiweb, Vodafone, Three and O2 will now have 30 days to introduce mechanisms that stop users from visiting The Pirate Bay, a website which facilitates the downloading of copyrighted material free of charge and without the copyright holder’s approval.

Justice Brian McGovern issued an order which had been drafted by music publishers EMI, Sony, Universal Music and Warner Music in collaboration with the six internet providers.

He said the internet providers had not argued that it would be inappropriate to issue a blocking order, given Irish statute law and previous court rulings in Ireland, the UK and the EU.

The order will apply not only to any current incarnation of The Pirate Bay, but any other address at which the service becomes available in future. It is unclear whether this includes any ‘mirrors’ of The Pirate Bay, of which there are hundreds around the internet.

First outing for ‘Irish SOPA’

The ruling is the first time that a controversial law, introduced last year, has been used by a copyright holder to block access to a website.

The controversial law was dubbed the ‘Irish SOPA’ because of fears that it could allow court orders to take down, or block access to, objectionable online content.

That legislation was introduced after a previous case in which an order was sought against UPC.

In that ruling, Justice Peter Charleton said European e-commerce directives offered copyright holders the right to seek court orders against intermediaries “whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right.”

However, he found that this European directive had not been transposed into Irish law – meaning there was nothing in Irish law that allowed him issue an order which blocked access to The Pirate Bay for UPC customers.

Today, Justice McGovern said he fully agreed with the Charleton ruling, believing that Ireland had not adopted the relevant EU laws granting judicial relief to the holders of copyrighted works to stop their works from being pirated.

In an earlier case, the court had ordered Eircom to block The Pirate Bay for its internet users, on the grounds that the website could be used for the easy sharing of copyrighted material without the prior approval of the copyright holder.