High Court orders six internet providers to block The Pirate Bay in Ireland

It’s finally happened. Six of the major internet service providers (ISPs) in Ireland have been ordered by the High Court to block access to The Pirate Bay from their customers.

The popular and controversial file-sharing site The Pirate Bay will become inaccessible to Irish internet users soon as the High Court has ordered Vodafone, UPC, Imagine, Digiweb, Hutchison Whampoa (3 Ireland) and Telefónica (O2 Ireland), to block the site once and for all.

In fairness, it was only a matter of time before the six ISPs were told to block the site seeing as Eircom has been blocking The Pirate Bay from their customers since late 2009.

But why now? Well, this has been an on going problem ever since the three big music labels - EMI, Sony and Warner Music - took a case to the Commercial Court claiming that The Pirate Bay was making them lose money and the ISPs were partially to blame.

According to Silicon Republic: “The labels claimed 200,000 people – about 8 per cent of the internet user base in Ireland – access The Pirate Bay and the labels have long argued this is having a devastating effect, to the tune of €20m a year from lost sales of music, film, TV and video-game content.”

After following an amendment made to the Copyright Act 2000, which was signed into law this time last year by Innovation Minister Sean Sherlock, Mr Justice Brian McGovern ruled in favour of the music labels, giving the ISPs 30 days to block The Pirate Bay...

Basically, thar be no more plunderin' any more shared files.