A group of copyright trade organizations in Iceland have filed a complaint, demanding that Internet providers block The Pirate Bay and local torrent site Deildu.net. The groups, which represent the major record labels and movie studios, say they were left with no other options as all previous efforts to curb online piracy through these sites failed. Hrafn Gunnarsson, a member of Iceland’s Parliament for the Pirate Party, believes that the request is futile and overbroad.

tpb-logoThe efforts to cut access to The Pirate Bay in Europe continues, with yet another country looking to block the defiant torrent site.

A group of copyright groups including the local equivalent of the RIAA (STEF) and MPAA (SMAIS) filed a complaint with the local head of police last week.

The groups request an injunction to force local ISPs to block their users’ access to The Pirate Bay, following the examples of the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and other European countries.

In addition, the groups also want the providers to block access to Deildu.net, the largest private BitTorrent tracker in Iceland. Both sites are quite popular with locals, with The Pirate Bay currently the 53rd most visited website in Iceland and Deildu.net ranked 142nd.

In a press release the copyright holders state that they saw no other option than to go down the blocking route. They previously reported the operators of the websites to the police, but without much success. In addition they launched a public awareness campaign to promote legal alternatives, but online piracy continues to thrive.

Blocking Internet users’ access to The Pirate Bay will be much more effective, they argue.

“Blocking access to websites that offer a wide range of entertainment without permission of the copyright holders has been proven effective in neighboring countries, and has a strong fundament in EU legislation,” the groups note.

“This action doesn’t go against freedom of expression as it aims to prevent copyright infringement and protect the rights and income of authors, artists and producers,” they add.

Hrafn Gunnarsson, a member of Iceland’s Parliament for the Pirate Party, doubts that a blockade will be very effective. He notes that there are thousands of other sites just like The Pirate Bay, so a blockade will simply result in a failure, or turn into a police state Internet.

“It’s comparable to the police holding the Department of Transportation responsible for fleeing criminals, simply because they took advantage of the road to get away,” Gunnarsson notes.

The copyright groups’ complaint is not supported by all artists. Snæbjörn Ragnarsson, the bass player of the popular Icelandic viking heavy metal band Skálmöld, says that he’s well aware of people’s downloading habits but that they are still doing pretty well.

“It does not change the fact that we are selling well both at home and abroad. It simply can not be true that the majority of people get their music illegally, and if they do then the law is most likely broken,” Ragnarsson says.

The Pirate Bay is unlikely to be bothered by yet another country where copyright holders want to take their site off the Internet. In August the Pirate Bay team launched the Pirate Browser to circumvent these types of censorship. In addition, they are working on a truly P2P-based website that will be impossible to block or take offline.