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BPI unblocks FilesTube
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 15 December 2014
So this is novel. A one-time piracy website has been officially un-web-blocked in the UK after relaunching itself as a licensed video aggregator.
FilesTube was one of the websites that UK internet service providers were ordered to block their users from accessing after court action by record industry trade body the BPI back in October last year.
But earlier this month the website, which previously aggregated links to content stored in cyber-lockers, which was therefore mostly unlicensed, relaunched as an aggregator of only legit video-on-demand content.
According to Torrentfreak, FilesTube’s Poland-based operators anticipated having to go the English High Court themselves to get their domains unblocked in the UK, but it turned out the BPI was monitoring the situation and voluntarily requested the block be removed.
That the BPI responded so quickly to the change in business model at FilesTube is pretty impressive, though such action helps back up the trade group’s claim that one of its motivations for blocking piracy websites is to persuade the operators of said sites to go legit.
The BPI’s General Counsel Kiaron Whitehead told TorrentFreak: “We are pleased that the block has encouraged FilesTube to change its business model so that it no longer appears to infringe music rights. Accordingly, we have agreed to un-block the site, which the ISPs will implement over the next few weeks. We hope that other sites which are subject to blocking orders will follow suit and help to support the development of legal digital entertainment”.
Meanwhile Maciej Zawisza from FilesTube welcomed the development, saying: “We used to be a media search engine for content on cyber-locker sites. Now we operate as a free VOD aggregator with licensed content only. We are grateful to BPI for agreeing to lift the blocks and we look forward to the growth of the new FilesTube”.
Of course, while it’s good to try to persuade the operators of piracy sites to re-invent their services as legit concerns, it remains to be seen if FilesTube can retain its audience now that it is only aggregating content from licensed sources.
