The Cost of Blocking Pirate Sites in the UK

CYBERSPACE—It's unclear if the scenario would play out similarly for anyone attempting to use British courts to block a pirate site pushing adult content, but TorrentFreak has a tasty piece about the "skyrocketing" cost of blocking a music or movie pirating site. It ain't cheap. "On Friday," writes Andy, "news broke that luxury brand company Richemont had succeeded in its quest to have several sites selling counterfeit products blocked by the UK’s largest ISPs. The landmark ruling, which opens the floodgates for perhaps tens of thousands of other sites to be blocked at the ISP level, contained some surprise information on the costs involved in blocking infringing websites. The amounts cited by Justice Arnold all involve previous actions undertaken by the movie and music industry against sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents." Cut to the chase: Information "provided to the court reveals that an unopposed application for a section 97A blocking order" works out at around £14,000 per website. That currently works out to a little over $22,500. Regarding music, Andy reports, "The record labels’ costs aren’t revealed but Justice Arnold said 'it is safe to assume that they are of a similar magnitude to the costs incurred by the film studios.' "In copyright cases," he adds, "47 sites have been blocked at the ISP level = £658,000." That currently works out to a tad over $1,060,000. TF also reports, however, that as the number of blocked sites increases, so do costs for the ISPs required to block them. While the ISPs are vague as to the actual costs, they say, according to Andy, that "they are still being incurred on an ongoing basis. All incur ongoing costs when filtering websites such as those on the Internet Watch List, but copyright injunctions only add to the load." Who will bear those costs into the future? According to Justice Arnold, “It is obvious that ISPs faced with the costs of implementing website orders have a choice. They may either absorb these costs themselves, resulting in slightly lower profit margins, or they may pass these costs on to their subscribers in the form of higher subscription charges." Andy's conclusion sounds like the probable outcome: "Since all ISPs will have to bear similar costs, it seems likely that the former will prove most attractive to them, as usual."