Countries blocking access to The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay (TPB), a well-known file-sharing website, has faced censorship from Internet Service Providers (ISPs)in various countries due to legal and regulatory actions.

Below i Argentina On 30 June 2014, the Argentine National Communications Commission (CNC) ordered ISPs to block all TPB domains following a trial involving the Argentinian Chamber of Phonograms Producers (CAPIF).

Brazil In July 2021, following Operation 404 against internet piracy, major ISPs like Claro, Oi, and TIM implemented DNS blocks on several torrent websites, including TPB, across nine Brazilian states.

Finland In October 2011, the Helsinki District Court ruled that Elisa Oyj, a major Finnish ISP, must block access to TPB or face a substantial fine.

Users attempting to access the site are redirected to a government-maintained page citing violations of Indonesian copyright law and the presence of malicious content.

Kuwait In February 2008, the Ministry of Information and Culture ordered ISPs to block 20 torrent sites, including TPB, aiming to curb piracy.

United Kingdom In April 2012, the High Court ordered major UK ISPs to block access to TPB following a legal challenge by the British Phonographic Industry.

[3][4] In August of 2015, the Commercial Court of Vienna ordered local internet provider A1 Telekom Austria to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, alongside 1337x, isoHunt, and h33t.to.

[7] After the founders of The Pirate Bay lost their 2009 trial, the Belgian Anti-Piracy Foundation (BAF) began arguing for two ISPs – Belgacom and Telenet – to block subscriber access to the site.

[15][16] On 13 July, Claro, Oi, and TIM, the three main Internet service providers in the country, performed a DNS block of several torrent websites, including The Pirate Bay, in nine Brazilian states.

On 5 February 2008, the district court of Frederiksberg, Copenhagen ruled that one of Denmark's largest ISPs, DMT2-Tele2, was assisting its customers in copyright infringement by allowing the use of The Pirate Bay, and that they were to block access to the site.

[26][27] Following the court's decision, TDC, Denmark's largest ISP and owner of most of the cables, decided to block access to The Pirate Bay as a preventive measure.

[33] On 13 May 2010, the Hamburg District Court ordered an injunction against CB3Rob Ltd & Co KG (CyberBunker) and its operator, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, restraining them from connecting The Pirate Bay site to the Internet.

In October 2013, several copyright organizations, including STEF and SMAIS, requested an injunction for ISPs to block The Pirate Bay and local BitTorrent tracker Deildu.net.

[38] The Pirate Bay, and some other file-sharing and video streaming sites, were blocked in India, from 4 May 2012, under orders of the Department of Telecom (DoT) without any stated reasons or prior warnings.

[39] The block was enforced by a number of ISPs, including Airtel, Reliance Communications, Tikona Digital Networks, Aircel, MTNL, BSNL and Vodafone.

The website itself states that The Pirate Bay is blocked due to it having malicious contents such as pornography materials along with others and also violating Indonesian Copyright law, Act No.

[44] After eight court days, the parties reached a settlement to introduce a graduated response policy to disconnect customers involved in copyright infringing activity.

In a judgment given by Irish High Court Justice Peter Charleton, on 16 April 2010, ruled that the three strikes policy was legal and described the Pirate Bay as "a site dedicated, on a weird ideological basis, to basically stealing the copyright owned by the plaintiffs in mainly musical works.

[51][52] In April 2011 the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice stated in a written opinion that from his view no ISP can be required to filter the Internet, and particularly not to enforce copyright law.

[54] As of December 2011, a ruling against Eircom's "three strikes" anti-online file sharing system was passed due to privacy concerns with collecting of IP addresses.

[55] On 12 June 2013, EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal won a court order for UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G Ltd and Telefónica O2 Ireland Ltd. to block access to The Pirate Bay, and have 30 days to do so.

The deputy public prosecutor pursued the complaint in the Bergamo Court for Preliminary Investigations, which on 1 August 2008 decreed to block access from Italian ISPs to all Pirate Bay addresses.

[63] Two Italian IT lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi together with forensics expert Matteo Flora appealed to the Bergamo court, which reviewed the case and on 24 September 2008 quashed the original ruling.

[64] The decision lifting the block was based on the applicability of the "preventive seizure" section of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, which cannot force actions on parties unrelated to the potential offence (ISPs to filter users' traffic).

The defendants did not attend the hearing and hadn't arranged representation, so on 30 July 2009 the court entered an in absentia default judgment against them, accepting the complainants demands.

[71][72][73][74] In a separate case handled at the same time, the court ordered the same fines for the expected new owner of The Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory X, were it not to stop the copyright infringements after the site's takeover.

[82] On 28 January 2014, The Court of Appeal in The Hague judged that the ongoing blockade was ineffective and, in addition, easy to circumvent, and decided that Ziggo and XS4ALL were no longer required to block access to The Pirate Bay.

Asker and Bærum District Court rejected demands from the recording artists' copyright organisation TONO against Norway's largest internet provider, Telenor, to have The Pirate Bay blocked.

[87][88] On July 23, 2013, Pakistani ISPs blocked The Pirate Bay, along with KickassTorrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent, Mininova, and private tracker TorrentLeech for unknown reasons.