For a brief time yesterday it seemed that while the Swedish net firms were resisting calls to block the Bay, at least one UK ISP was doing it without even being asked to. Customers of BT's mobile broadband service suddenly found access to the BitTorrent tracker was blocked. But when asked, the the phone firm said the block was nothing to do with copyright or last week's Swedish ruling, but rather because of concerns 'adult content' could be accessed via the tracker, and it was therefore being blocked to protect the kids.
The tel co cited a voluntary code run by the Internet Watch Foundation, the charitable body which monitors "criminally obscene" content online, and in particular child porn, though they quickly issued a statement saying The Pirate Bay didn't fall foul of any of their codes, because, as far as they knew, it didn't provide links to any of the sort of content that would fall under their definition of "criminally obscene" (which doesn't, in case you wondered, include mainstream pornography).
BT subsequently clarified the situation, telling reporters: "BT and the other UK mobile operators have agreed and implemented a voluntary code of practise for mobile content that restricts access to content unsuitable for customers under the age of 18. The list of sites and content that is restricted is compiled by individual operators themselves. The warning that BT provides links to the Internet Watch Foundation website for information on the code only". It should be noted that while access to the Bay is automatically blocked on BT mobile broadband as of this week, users can unlock the block by calling 150.