TorrentFreak

Following its successful application to have The Pirate Bay blocked by several leading ISPs in the UK, the recording industry is back again with new demands. The BPI has reportedly asked Internet service providers such as BT, Virgin and TalkTalk to block leading torrent sites Kickass Torrents, H33t and Fenopy. The ISPs have refused to do so voluntarily but will all do so should a court order a blockade. That will happen, it’s just a question of when – the BPI has Christmas in mind.

Following their legal action against The Pirate Bay, which resulted in a High Court order against some of UK’s largest ISPs, the record labels of the BPI are now preparing to target other leading torrent sites. Framing discussions around having The Pirate Bay blocked, the group is polling its members and affiliated groups to find out if they have any connections to a range of torrent sites including Demonoid, ExtraTorrent, H33T and TorrentReactor.

More and more regularly, TorrentFreak has been turning over its Sunday front page to people who have an opinion on copyright, file-sharing and other related issues. From Rick Falkvinge to a member of the European Parliament, from lawyers to a filmmaker, we’re happy to share our platform. Today we have our very first musical contribution from talented UK artist Dan Bull, who is distinctly unimpressed with the BPI.

Following the High Court ruling ordering UK ISP BT to block Usenet indexing site Newzbin2, it was only a matter of time before that momentum was capitalized upon by the movie and music industries. Today a coalition of companies led by the BPI demanded that BT also block The Pirate Bay, either voluntarily or by consenting to a court order.

The Open Rights Group have called on the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), MPA(A) and other rights groups to make their UK website blocking proposals public. “Website blocking is a matter of significant public interest. We’re concerned that proposals for this censorship scheme are developing in the shadows,” writes peter Bradwell on ORG. “So together with [...]

Last week the BPI released their overview of 2010 sales volumes in the UK. As always, their press release was filled with claims that piracy is ruining their industry and most mainstream media was quick to republish this propaganda. However, we can use the very same data to show that more music is being sold than ever before, and argue that piracy is likely to have had very little impact.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK’s main recording industry trade body, came out with guns blazing against Google today. BPI says that search engines like Google are as popular as P2P applications as a source for illegal downloads. The music industry is pressing Google and others to censor their search results in favor of ‘legal’ music services.