The Move Comes After The British Phonographic Institute Successfully Issued Orders To Block File-Sharing Sites 10 Years Ago, Though It Was Rarely Enforced.

Ever since the invention of the cassette tape in 1963, people have been trying to obtain the songs they want without paying the artist and the record company.

During the 1970s and 1980s radio DJs talked over the first few and last seconds of the track being played, in order to throw off would be tape pirates.

The British Phonographic Institute (BPI) around this time started putting imprints on the j-cards that came with cassettes which said: “Home taping is killing music, and it's illegal”.

Between 1999 and 2001 during the era of burning CDs and the introduction of MP3 Players, people across the world were using a file sharing site called Napster to share music without paying artists and record companies.

It wasn't until Metallica v. Napster that the site was shut down, after the heavy metal group found that their demo for I Disappear (Which was to be featured on the soundtrack for Mission Impossible II) was found on the site before it was officially released.

In 2002, the once popular file sharing service filed for bankruptcy and closed it's doors.

In recent years with the rise of licenced music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, many have taken to illegally streaming music on third party websites.

In 2012, the BPI had successfully issued a case against The Pirate Bay: A file-sharing site akin to Napster.

However the enforcement of banning streaming pirates didn't go into full effect until this year, as more people get their music online via YouTube and the aforementioned streaming services.

Now the mobile network and internet provider EE has announced plans to automatically block/blacklist all third party streaming and file sharing sites, as the government pressures providers to get rid of digital music piracy.

Other networks slated to follow in EE's footsteps include Vodafone, 3, and O2.

It goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.