Australian ISPs ordered to block The Pirate Bay by year's end
The Pirate Bay has been chased around the world, and now Australia's internet service providers have been ordered to block it Down Under, along with a raft of other torrent sites.
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The round-the-world chase of The Pirate Bay continues, with Australian internet service providers now being told they must block the site by the end of the year.
The Federal Court of Australia has ordered a number of Australia's largest ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, along with a number of other torrent sites including TorrentHound, Torrentz, IsoHunt and SolarMovie.
The judgment means that Australian internet users trying to access these sites will be met with a court-ordered landing page every time they try to access one of the offending sites, warning them that they've tried to access copyright-infringing content.
But questions are already being asked about just how effective the site-blocks will be, especially considering the penchant for piracy websites (including The Pirate Bay) to jump around the web in a bid to avoid detection by authorities.
The battle against piracy has been long-running in Australia, with the producers of "Dallas Buyers Club" appearing in court in 2015 in a long-running legal battle to chase down people caught pirating the Oscar-winning film.
The case against The Pirate Bay is the first test of new site-blocking legislation passed by Australia's federal government in 2015, and has seen Australian film studio Roadshow Films, as well as Disney and Columbia Pictures, head to court in a bid to stop torrenting.
But while the site-blocking laws received bipartisan support in Australia's parliament, critics of the laws say site-blocking amounts to nothing more than an "internet filter" that has the potential to sweep the wrong websites into its net.
Australian consumers have also complained that the laws can easily be skirted with the use of a VPN, and that the best way to deal with piracy in Australia is to ensure that fans Down Under don't have to wait months for their favourite TV shows, or pay through the nose for legitimate downloads.
The ISPs will have 15 days to "take reasonable steps to disable access" to the sites, however rights holders will need to pay AU$50 per domain that they want blocked.
And if The Pirate Bay and its ilk pop up elsewhere?
The movie studios will have the right to apply (in writing) to have further URLs blocked. But just how often that happens, and how far rights holders will have to go in chasing these sites down the rabbit hole, remains to be seen.