If you're an Internet user in the United Kingdom, you're about to be in for a surprise when you try to access file-sharing website The Pirate Bay: nothingness.
The UK High Court has ruled that the country's Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must block their users from accessing the Swedish site, according to the BBC.
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Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media -- the UK's top ISPs -- are all under order to block users' access to The Pirate Bay. Based on 2009 figures, this means that roughly 51.5 million internet users in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be affected by the ruling.
The Pirate Bay is a longstanding and controversial website which hosts "magnet links" that allow users to find files being shared by others across the web. It launched in 2003 and has since been the target of numerous copyright infringement lawsuits. Many of the sites users share pirated music, movies and software.
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The British Phonographic Industry -- the UK's version of the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA -- welcomed the decision.
"Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists," the BPI told the BBC.
The Pirate Bay recently took several measures including a switch to magnet links from BitTorrent files and the use of a .se instead of a .org domain registration in an effort to protect itself from legal action.
Do you live in one of the areas affected by the ruling? Do you have a Plan B for accessing files stored on The Pirate Bay? Tell us about it in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, flyparade
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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