The five ISPs forced by U.K.'s High Court to impose a block on its customers accessing The Pirate Bay have less two weeks to comply with the order, or face charges of being in contempt of court.

The block must be imposed within 30 days from the time the court issued its ruling, according to sources.

The Pirate Bay, used to share Magnet links often used for illegally sharing copyrighted files, must therefore be blocked by the selected ISPs by May 30 at the latest.

The legal precedent was set when telecoms giant BT was told in October it had 14 days to block access to the file-sharing site Newzbin 2. That case alone opened the floodgates to further online censorship in the country.

Two of the five ISPs --- Virgin Media and Orange Broadband --- have already imposed the block.

O2, Sky, and TalkTalk have said they will block access to The Pirate Bay within the deadline.

Ironically, The Pirate Bay said it had a 12 million strong traffic boost on May 1, thanks to the "free advertising" by the media covering the court ruling.

An employee of one of the ISPs speaking to ZDNet under conditions of anonymity --- who claimed to have knowledge of the situation --- said the broadband provider would "hold off" on the block "for as long as possible" in a bid to starve off what it believes to be court-imposed online censorship.

The source did not want the broadband provider named.

While ISPs will have to make "reasonable steps" to prevent their customers from accessing the site, one should note that it is entirely legal for customers to knowingly and deliberately circumventing the blocks through proxy websites and private networks.

BT asked the court for more time to consider its position. "We continue to have discussions with the BPI and we hope to announce an outcome acceptable to both of us soon," the company said on April 30.

Everything Everywhere chief executive Olaf Swantee said in an interview with Sky News the block could be put into force "overnight". Indeed it was on May 10, exactly a week after Virgin Media threw the switch on its own networks.

If we break down the numbers, it becomes clear as to how many U.K. citizens will be cut off from the 'pirate' site.

The two largest broadband providers BT and TalkTalk have 8 million and 4 million customers respectively. Sky Broadband has 3.2 million customers, while Orange Broadband has 713,000 and O2 has 617,000.

In total, more that 16.5 million U.K. customers will be prevented from accessing The Pirate Bay, which equates to around a quarter of the U.K. population --- a far higher estimate than the initial 10 million first projected.

It's a little bit terrifying, do you not think?

Related: