The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has scored a legal victory with a U.K. judge deciding that British Telecom (BT (News - Alert)) has to close access to Newzbin2.

The Newzbin2 site connects to “stolen movies, television programs, games, music and books,” the MPA said in a blog post. The MPA argued hard for the ruling, as did the U.K. creative sector.

Movie makers wanted to keep Newzbin2 from using the BT Internet to rake in profits from copyright theft. The MPA claims that some 700,000 members use Newzbin. It earns over $1.6 million in profit from stolen content annually, the MPA added.

Chris Marcich, president and managing director of the organization’s European office, said, the “ruling from Justice Arnold is a victory for millions of people working in the UK creative industries and demonstrates that the law of the land must apply online.”

“This court action was never an attack on ISPs [independent service providers] but we do need their cooperation to deal with the Newzbin site which continually tries to evade the law and judicial sanction,” Marcich added. “Newzbin is a notorious pirate website which makes hundreds of thousands of copyrighted products available without permission and with no regard for the law.”

In addition, Christine Payne, chair of the Creative Coalition Campaign, a partnership of trade unions in the creative industries in the United Kingdom, said that, “Thousands of businesses and millions of workers now know that the law of the land applies to the internet. Online copyright theft deprives businesses of up to 20 percent of their revenues every year. Finally, this little known law will help us to protect our property.”

Arnold’s ruling said in part, “BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the Studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes, it knows that the users of Newzbin2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin2.” 

In its formal response to the ruling, the MPA said it is “a significant judgment” and it “reflects a clear recognition that under the existing law, Courts can issue orders to prevent illegal activity online. It rejects BT arguments that they have no responsibility to act against copyright theft and states that the order is proportionate.”

 “This comprehensive and unequivocal judgment sets a clear legal precedent which will enable content creators and distributors to secure greater cooperation from ISPs in the UK to address content theft on the internet and in particular to deal with websites that are focused on wholesale copyright theft,” the MPA added.

The MPA concluded that to fight content theft “all the players in the Internet ecosystem – creators, ISPs, pay processors, advertisers, Internet users and more – need to work together to keep rogue sites from reaching and profiting from the global marketplace.”

In its analysis of the ruling, Reuters said it was a win for studios such as Paramount Pictures and Disney (News - Alert), and it “is believed to be the first case in the UK in which an internet provider has been forced to block access to a website under the 1988 Copyright, Design and Patents Act.”

Simon Milner, director of group industry policy at BT, told Reuters (News - Alert) the ruling is “helpful” and the company will not file an appeal.

In another recent issue, the Motion Picture Association of America applauded a U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the First Amendment relating to a 2005 California law which banned the sale and rental of computer and video games to minors, TMCnet reported.

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