A court order blocked pirate sites that weren’t supposed to be blocked
One week ago, the news site TorrentFreak reported that The Pirate Bay and nearly 20 other torrent and pirate sites were being blocked by Cogent Communications, an Internet backbone provider. The block had been in place for more than a week and appeared to "appl[y] to the company's entire global network," affecting customers of ISPs "from all over the world" that send traffic through Cogent.
Though most Internet users were unaffected, anyone "attempting to pass requests through Cogent's network are unable to access [the sites]," the article said.
Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer yesterday confirmed to Ars that the company is complying with a court order issued recently in Spain. But The Pirate Bay was not the subject of the court order, Schaeffer also confirmed. Schaeffer would not say which site or sites the order was intended to block, but the incident demonstrates how court orders to block websites can have unintended effects. (We have not been able to track down the specific court order at this time.)
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