United Kingdom internet service providers must block The Pirate Bay, that nation's High Court said Monday.

Major record labels, including EMI and Sony, sued the country's major ISPs claiming they must prevent access to the world's most notorious file-sharing site because it was facilitating the infringement of its copyrights.

The development comes three months after Sweden's Supreme Court upheld the prison sentences of the four founders of The Pirate Bay, which has been on Hollywood's and the recording industry's most-hated lists following its 2003 inception.

However, it's not likely the latest blockade order will be effective. The Pirate Bay has been playing a game of cat and mousewith government orders to block access for years. It usually always perseveres and is one of the world's most heavily trafficked sites, pointing users to free games, music, movies and software, including those uploaded intentionally by their own creators.

Even an order for a Swedish ISP to block access to the Swedish site proved futile.

A proposal in the U.S. Senate, known as SOPA, that would have given the Justice Department the ability to force ISPs to block citizens from visiting sites deemed to be facilitating copyright infringement was sidelined after an angry coalition of internet users and tech companies killed the legislation with an online protest in January.

In response to the High Court's order giving ISPs weeks to block access, a Pirate Bay "spokesperson" told TorrentFreak that circumventing any blockade will be easy.

"This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising," the spokesperson said.

The United Kingdom's Pirate Party said it would offer a reverse proxy to enable blocked users to reach The Pirate Bay. Users would also be able to circumvent any ISP blocking by using a VPN service or going to any number of sites that also have lists of torrent files. The order does not cover the bittorrent protocol, just The Pirate Bay's website.

Virgin Media, a U.K. internet service provider, said the industry should work to change "consumer behavior" to cut down on infringement.

"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behavior to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price," Virgin said.

The affected ISPs include Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, which all must prevent their users from accessing the site.

Geoff Taylor, the British Recorded Music Industry chief executive, said The Pirate Bay, which makes money via advertising, lines "their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them."

Photo: m.a.r.c./Flickr