Just tested and this does seem to be in effect. Quite surprised to see it in action here. Not that I support piracy but if websites can be shut down on basis of piracy, what stops them shutting them down on for any other reason. Lets hope this stays as a separate incident.
And I guess most people using torrents know how to use anonymous web-proxies, so this doesn't really block the site that efficiently. To enforce blocking piratebay they'd have to block the proxies too, and that would open up another set of problems. Lets now wait for the decision from the supreme court and hope they are sensible.
PirateBay is a search engine. Nothing more. It's really stupid to go after sites like this. There are multiple other "torrent sites" operating on the same torrents. You take one down, others are alive. Besides, to start a torrent you only need one hash[1] and working DHT. There are sites which only "host" this hash. On which grounds could you possibly take them down? Then there is another chapter - private trackers. So trying to block one search engine/tracker is really pointless.
And PirateBay itself doesn't even host any copyrighted material. Rapidshare, Megaupload and others do. But they have money.
if websites can be shut down on basis of piracy, what stops them shutting them down on for any other reason?
Nothing. Which is exactly why governments the world over are so happy to help the content industry: "piracy" is just another excuse to make mass-scale censorship widely accepted, because the scaremongering about paedophilia wasn't enough (the targeted websites were too small, public opinion didn't really notice them, and so the concept of net censorship being "normal" didn't really pass).
And I guess most people using torrents know how to use anonymous web-proxies, so this doesn't really block the site that efficiently. To enforce blocking piratebay they'd have to block the proxies too, and that would open up another set of problems. Lets now wait for the decision from the supreme court and hope they are sensible.