The nature of illicit filesharing has, for many years, proven too slippery for national authorities to effectively monitor and regulate. The route-one approach – to simply shut down torrent tracking sites – has proven futile, chiefly because many of them operate within the eyes of the law in their own jurisdictions.
The founders of The Pirate Bay, for example, maintain that their site simply points to where content can be found, not actually host it, which is legitimate under Swedish law.
And even if such websites were to close, there is an global subculture of piracy enthusiasts dedicated to the cause of illicit filesharing. The Pirate Bay has servers in Russia, Belgium, and one placed in the vaults of a bank in Stockholm. The team behind the site had previously tried to buy a small island off the coast of England – a tiny, self-declared sovereign nation which sits outside the jurisdiction of the UK – and had raised over $20,000 in donations for the cause.
Daunted by the legal complexities that are tied to anti-piracy measures, along with the unremitting tenacity of piracy groups themselves, entertainment providers have in recent times turned elsewhere to find a possible solution.
This is where Internet Service Providers, and an ongoing report from UK communications Minister Lord Carter, come into the equation.