In October 2012, BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) Ltd ("BPI") asked six ISPs to prevent access to three peer-to-peer sharing websites (Fenopy, H33t and KAT) due to their alleged illegal distribution of music. When its request was denied, a number of major record companies including EMI, Universal Music and Sony Music UK (on behalf of themselves and BPI) brought a legal action.

The users of these P2P websites were found to be infringing the claimants' copyrights, both by copying sound recordings and by communicating them to the public.

The website operators' copyright infringement was three-fold: first, communicating sound recordings to the public; second, authorising the infringing acts by their users; and third, joint liability for infringements by UK users.

The ISPs have actual knowledge of the copyright infringements by both users and operators since they were notified in October 2012 of the illegal sharing of content via these websites.

Quoting statistical data from prior cases in Italy and the UK, the Court concluded that blocking orders are "reasonably effective" as a measure to protect copyright. The Court found its blocking order to be proportionate in light of the specific facts of the case. The need to protect intellectual property rights of the claimants outweighs the rights, under Article 11 (freedom of expression) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, of users, website operators and ISPs and that the order was justified even if only a minority of users has their access prevented.

The UK High Court has issued similar orders in the past with regard to the Newzbin2 website (decision from 26 October 2011) and The Pirate Bay website (decision from 20 February 2012).