BT will not appeal ruling to block pirate website Newzbin2

BT said it will not fight the ruling ordering it to block the Newzbin2 website even though consumer groups have called the court's decision "short sighted".

Simon Milner, the director of BT's group industry policy, told Computeractive it would, however, be looking for safeguards and indemnity in any order that the court makes.

It will not be blocking the site until the court makes the order, later this year. At this time it will also discuss what measures it will have to take to abide by the ruling

"We are not obliged to and will not be doing anything until we have got the order. We will be back in court probably in October, where we will be asking for checks and balances on what the MPA has asked for in paragraph 12 of the ruling," said Milner.

In this paragraph the MPA has asked that BT uses "IP address blocking in respect of each and every IP address from which the said website operates or is available and which is notified in writing to the Respondent by the Applicants or their agents". It said if BT uses its Cleanfeed technology it would not require Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) based blocking as well

He said these balances would be asked for to protect BT from any possible problems in future if the MPA wants the internet service provider (ISP) to block other sites. He added that the MPA would also have to bear the costs

"It should not be up to BT to finance this but the MPA. BT will also not look for infringing sites, so if the MPA wants to block other sites it believes are engaged in illegal file sharing it will have to give us the URLs. And if a site is wrongly accused and comes after us the MPA will have to compensate BT," he said.

Milner also said he expected the MPA to ask for orders to force other ISPs to abide by the ruling given by Justice Arnold today in the high court.

Whether website blocking will effectively address the problem of illegal file sharing however is open to debate. When asked how much impact the ruling would have on piracy and the Newzbin2 site, Mr Milner said he didn't believe the site was very large. And he believed the company may have only around 10,000 customers who use the site.

Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the Internet Providers Association said the ruling brought "clarity on what is a complex area" but added that "concerns about over-blocking, ease of circumvention and increased encryption are widely-recognised, which means that blocking is not a silver bullet to stop online copyright infringement."

Mike O'Connor, Consumer Focus' chief executive said the MPA was making the wrong moves.

"Website blocking only treats the symptoms, not the cause of why consumers infringe copyright. Blocking access to Newzbin2 is short-sighted and will not reduce demand for Hollywood movies.

"Consumers will seek out other sources and the only long term solution is more and better legal alternatives. The issue is not that consumers won't pay - after all Newzbin2 is a subscription service," he said.

Peter Bradwell, Copyright Campaigner at the Open Rights Group said: "Website blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgements won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries.

"And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown.

"If the goal is boosting creators' ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand."