Something for the UK record industry to both cheer about and also feel slightly envious towards. The UK High Court has ruled that the country’s ISPs have to block access to sites offering unlicensed downloads of e-books. Among the sites on the blacklists – which the ISPs were given 10 days to block – were AvaxHome, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap, Libgen, Bookfi and Bookre.
The case was brought by the Publishers’ Association, which claimed that around 80% of the 10m e-books these sites were offering were actually infringing. On top of this, the Publishers’ Association has asked Google to pull 1.75m URLs from its search results as they link to such sites. But, as the music industry well knows, blocking access to these sites is often more of a moral victory than a practical one as those keen enough to sponge up free content will find ways around any such digital blockades.
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