 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2023) |
This is a list of websites blocked in the United Kingdom.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2023) |
This is a list of websites blocked in the United Kingdom.
| Site name (s) | Domain (s) or URL (s) | Type of site (s) | Reason (s) | Blocked by | Start date | Resolution date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia [1] [2] | Virgin Killer record album article on en.wikipedia.org | Online encyclopedia | Potentially indecent image of underage child | Internet Watch Foundation | 5 December 2008 | 9 December 2008 (Unblocked by IWF) |
| Wayback Machine | archive.org | Web archive | Site incompatibility with Cleanfeed | Internet Watch Foundation [3] | 14 January 2009 | 16 January 2009 [4] |
| FileServe | fileserve.com | File hosting | Mistake | Internet Watch Foundation [5] | 16 November 2011 [6] | 18 November 2011 |
| NewzBin2 [7] | newzbin.com later newzbin.es | Usenet file search | Copyright | Motion Picture Association court order | 1 November 2011 | November 2012 (Site closed) |
| WordPress.com | Several servers of wordpress.com | Blog hosting | Mistake | ISP(s) [8] | 17 July 2013 | 29 July 2013 |
| TorrentFreak [9] | torrentfreak.com | News site | Technical implementation | Premier League court order — Sky Broadband | 7 August 2013 | 9 August 2013 |
| Radio Times and hundreds more [10] [11] | radiotimes.com plus many more | DNS provider and its customers | Technical implementation | Premier League court order | 13 August 2013 | 14 August 2013 |
| Imgur [12] | Specific address range(s) used by imgur.com | Image hosting | Technical issue with content lock system | EE | October 2013 | 22 November 2013 (Technical problem resolved) |
| WordPress.com | Several servers of wordpress.com | Blog hosting | Mistake | ISP(s) [13] | 26 November 2013 | 5 December 2013 |
| Imgur | imgur.com | Image hosting | Technical implementation [14] | Sky Broadband | 14 December 2013 | 16 December 2013 |
| WordPress.com | Several servers of wordpress.com | Blog hosting | Mistake | ISP(s) [15] | 12 March 2014 | 16 March 2014 |
| Imgur [16] | imgur.com | Image hosting | Technical fault [17] | Virgin Media | 20 May 2016 | 20 May 2016 |
| Imgur | imgur.com | Image hosting | Technical fault [18] | Virgin Media | 15 July 2019 | 15 July 2019 |
As part of UK sanctions against Russia, ISPs are required to take "reasonable steps to prevent" users accessing "an internet service provided by" a person or organisation sanctioned by the UK government. This effectively means blocking websites operated by such organisations. Organisations sanctioned are currently TV Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya. [19] [20] The websites currently listed by the UK government are:
Sites are blocked using various methods across the "Big 5" UK ISPs, in accordance with Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, making it difficult to ascertain the extent to which a site is 'blocked' or not. In December 2014, the affected ISPs decided to publish more information about the blocking orders they received. [23]
If a user visits a blocked site within the United Kingdom, the user will be forwarded to www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk which includes the list of blocked domains and court orders.
ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers subject to blocking orders include:
| Site name (s) | Domain (s) or URL (s) | Type of site (s) | Reason (s) | Was blocked by | Implementation date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Pirate Bay [27] |
| File sharing | Copyright | BPI court order | May 2012 |
|
| File sharing | Copyright | BPI court order [28] | March 2013 |
| Movie2k | movie2k.to | File sharing | Copyright | BBFC court order | May 2013 |
| Download For All | dl4all.com | File sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order | May 2013 |
| EZTV [28] | eztv.it | File sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order | July 2013 |
| First Row Sports [29] [30] | firstrow1.eu | Streaming | Copyright | Premier League court order | July 2013 |
| File sharing | Copyright | BPI court order [32] [33] | October 2013 | |
|
|
| Copyright | MPAA court order | November 2013 |
|
| Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order [34] | November 2013 |
|
| Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order | March 2014 |
| Various |
| Luxury goods | Counterfeit goods |
| October 2014 |
|
| File sharing | Copyright | BPI court order | October 2014 |
|
| File sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order [36] | November 2014 |
| File sharing | Copyright | BPI court order [37] | March 2015 | |
| Ebook file sharing | Copyright | The Publishers Association court order [38] | May 2015 | |
| Members of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) | May 2016 | |||
| Streaming | Copyright | Members of the MPA (Motion Picture Association of America Inc) | October 2016 | |
| Various target servers | The Football Association Premier League Limited ("FAPL") | March 2017 (expired May 2017) | |||
| Various target servers | The Football Association Premier League Limited ("FAPL") | July 2017 | |||
| Streaming and File Sharing | Copyright | November 2017 | ||
| Team Xecutor Team Xecutor SX SX Cart: stargate3ds | stargate3ds.org xecuteros.com sxflashcart.com | Nintendo Switch sites | Copyright | 2019 | |
| Sci-Hub | sci-hub.se | Scientific Journal and Article Sharing | Copyright |
| February 2021 [39] |
| NitroFlare | nitroflare.com | File Sharing | Copyright | BPI court order | February 2021 |
| TinyZone Watch Series Levidia EUROPIX HD | tinyzonetv.to watchserieshd.stream watchserieshd.ru watchserieshd.org levidia.ch europixhd.pro europixhd.net | Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order | October 2021 |
| TvShows88 Soap2day Sflix Onionplay Hurawatch Gototub FmoviesFlixhq Cmovies BFLIX | tvshows88.live tv88.to soap2day.video onionplay.se gototub.net Hurawatch.ru Onionplay.se Sflix.to fmovies.co Flixhq.ru cmovies.so bflix.to | Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order | January 2022 |
| NSWROM NSW2U | nswrom.com nsw2u.net nsw2u.org nsw2u.com nsw2u.xyz | Streaming | Copyright | Nintendo court order | 2021 |
| SolarMovie Gmovies | solarmovie.pe solarmovies.win solarmovies.ms solarmovies.cyou solarmovies.space solarmovies.cloud solarmovies.quest solarmovieshd.org solarmovie123.net solarmovie.zone solarmovie.id solarmovie.fun solarmovie-online.cam real-solarmovie.com solarmovies.video solarmovie-free.com solarmovie.vip best-solarmovie.pro gmovies.cc | Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order | 2023 |
| Gfxtra 1hd.to | gfxtra31.com 1hd.to | File Sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order | July 2023 |
| Get Into PC Filecr Gfx Mountain Ymovies 123 Movies | getintopc.com filecr.com gfxmountain.com ymovies.vip 123movies.info | Streaming and File Sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order | August 2023 |
SoftProber 4Download SoftCamel FullVersionDL Heaven32 Taiwebs SoffBuff Getpczone AudioSEX Pesktop MaGeSY Putlocker | softprober.com 4download.net softcamel.com fullversiondl.com heaven32.com taiwebs.com softbuff.com getpczone.com audiosex.pro pesktop.com magesy.blog putlocker.boo | File Sharing | Copyright | MPAA court order | August 2023 |
| Streaming | Copyright | MPAA court order | September 2023 |
In furtherance of the above-mentioned goal of restricting access to The Pirate Bay and similar sites, the BPI believes that "ISPs are required to block the illegal sites themselves, and proxies and proxy aggregators whose sole or predominant purpose is to give access to the illegal sites." As such, sites linking to sites which acted as proxies to The Pirate Bay were themselves added to the list of banned sites, including piratebayproxy.co.uk, piratebayproxylist.com and ukbay.org. This led to the indirect blocking (or hiding) of sites at the following domains, among others: [40] [41]
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, program files, documents or electronic books/magazines. It involves various legal aspects as it is often used to exchange data that is copyrighted or licensed.
Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, administrative regulations and voluntary arrangements. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.
TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights.
Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy and founded on 24 July 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.
On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British watchdog group, blacklisted content on the English Wikipedia related to Scorpions' 1976 studio album Virgin Killer, due to the presence of its controversial cover artwork, depicting a young girl posing nude, with a faux shattered-glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was deemed to be "potentially illegal content" under English law which forbids the possession or creation of indecent photographs of children. The IWF's blacklist are used in web filtering systems such as Cleanfeed.
The Digital Economy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act addresses media policy issues related to digital media, including copyright infringement, Internet domain names, Channel 4 media content, local radio and video games. Introduced to Parliament by Lord Mandelson on 20 November 2009, it received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010. It came into force two months later, with some exceptions: several sections – 5, 6, 7, 15, 16(1)and 30 to 32 – came into force immediately, whilst others required a statutory instrument before they would come into force. However some provisions have never come into force since the required statutory instruments were never passed by Parliament and considered to be "shelved" by 2014, and other sections were repealed.
File sharing in the United Kingdom relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. In 2010, there were over 18.3 million households connected to the Internet in the United Kingdom, with 63% of these having a broadband connection. There are also many public Internet access points such as public libraries and Internet cafes.
EZTV is a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows.
Movie4k.to, formerly Movie2k.to, is a user-contributed video directory for television programs and films. It is an aggregation-website acting as a search index for online videos. In May 2013, Movie2k.to was shut down by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) due to copyright infringement concerns, but shortly after reopened as Movie4k.to. It primarily serves English and German-speaking areas. However, the site is also no longer accessible in the UK, Denmark, and customers of some ISPs in Austria due to ISPs blocking the site.
KickassTorrents was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.
PirateBrowser is an Internet browser by The Pirate Bay used to circumvent Internet censorship.
This is a list on countries where at least one internet service provider (ISP) formerly or currently censors the popular file sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB).
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a unit of the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud. It was established in 2013 with the responsibility to investigate and deter serious and organised intellectual property crime in the United Kingdom.
The precise number of websites blocked in the United Kingdom is unknown. Blocking techniques vary from one Internet service provider (ISP) to another with some sites or specific URLs blocked by some ISPs and not others. Websites and services are blocked using a combination of data feeds from private content-control technology companies, government agencies, NGOs, court orders in conjunction with the service administrators who may or may not have the power to unblock, additionally block, appeal or recategorise blocked content.
The child abuse image content list is a list of URLs and image hashes provided by the Internet Watch Foundation to its partners to enable the blocking of child pornography & criminally obscene adult content in the UK and by major international technology companies.
RARBG was a website that provided torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. From 2014 to 2023, RARBG repeatedly appeared in TorrentFreak's yearly list of most visited torrent websites. It was ranked 4th as of January 2023. The website did not allow users to upload their own torrents.
Library Genesis (LibGen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere. LibGen describes itself as a "links aggregator", providing a searchable database of items "collected from publicly available public Internet resources" as well as files uploaded "from users".
Putlocker is a file hosting index website used for streaming entertainment media, particularly films and television series, for free. The initial website originated in the United Kingdom in 2011, and grew to receive millions of daily visitors after the shutdown of Megaupload. In May 2016, the website was blocked in the UK by a High Court order, and at its peak prior to a temporary closure in late 2016, Alexa Internet listed Putlocker as ranking among the top 250 most-visited websites worldwide. Putlocker has been reported by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) as a major piracy threat.
The code will initially cover ISPs with more than 400,000 broadband-enabled fixed lines – currently BT, Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk Group and Virgin Media.