Thursday the MPA has requested the British court to order ISP BT to block access to Usenet indexer Newzbin.com for its subscribers.

In a statement to TorrentFreak the MPA refers to article 8, paragraph 3 of the EU Copyright Directive. This article provides for the possibility that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right. 

It is not only in the UK that rights holders are pursuing a blockage of filesharing platforms on a provider level before the courts. "Article 8.3 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive, of which S97A is the UK implementation, has been used successfully in Denmark to block rogue sites hosting illegal material, with further cases pending in Germany, Holland and Belgium”, according to the MPA.

In the Netherlands, the court of The Hague rejected Brein’s request for an interim measure to block The Pirate Bay under Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive. Brein has appealed the decision.

In Denmark, the Supreme Court has granted the IFPI's request to have provider Telenor block The Pirate Bay, based on the implementation of Article 5, paragraph 1, of the Author Directive in the Danish law.

In Belgium and Ireland the national courts have also rejected blocking requests to ISPs.

Source: Torrentfreak