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[Bowdon]

High Court Forces Big UK Broadband ISPs to Block 13 More Piracy Sites

The Motion Picture Association of Europe (MPA) has once again convinced the High Court to force all of the United Kingdom’s largest broadband ISPs to block access to 13 extra websites, which were all found to facilitate Internet copyright infringement (piracy).

As usual the MPA first attempted make a voluntarily request for BT, Virgin Media, O2, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk and EE to block the sites, which is traditionally refused because ISPs won’t impose such a block without legal grounds to do so.

Failing that they launched an injunction against the providers, which succeeded in harnessing Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) in order to force the ISPs into imposing a court ordered block.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I usually say that the last thing we need is more laws, especially international laws.

But in this case, rather than force ISPs to take expensive and perhaps pointless action, would it not make more sense to just have a new international law that facilitated easier prosecution of those individuals who operate the infringing sites?

Perhaps also, UK legislation to facilitate easier criminal prosecution of those who knowingly use their services, rather than leaving up to ineffective civil proceedings by the copyright owners?

[jelv]

I'm sure you'd be really pleased they made prosecution easier when they wrongly accuse you of downloading copyright material!

[sevenlayermuddle]

I'm sure you'd be really pleased they made prosecution easier when they wrongly accuse you of downloading copyright material!

I could be wrongly accused, but for the prosecution to succeed they'd have to prove I really was guilty.   

Morally IMHO copyright infringement is no different to other theft offences, such as shoplifting.  But most of us are happy that shoplifting is a criminal offence?

[Chrysalis]

shoplifting is stealing a physical object, copyright infringement you stealing nothing.  Nowhere near the same thing.

[Ronski]

What about all those people using so called Kodi boxes, I bet a lot of them have no idea they are watching content illegally. I wonder if this action will break anything on these boxes.

[Dray]

I doubt they are. Kodi is just the new name for XBMC - an opensource Media Centre.

[Bowdon]

Maybe they should try a different approach entirely as this current situation will never work fully. It's been tried since the days of Napster and as never stopped copyright abuse.

The actual amount of people downloading copyrighted material I suspect as exploded. I remember about 15 years ago someone showing me a number of papers in a bundle with lists of videos, games, music lists. Downloading all those files would have been a fairly specialist area for the average user as torrenting was just becoming known. These days I suspect every man and his dog can download copyrighted material with one click of the button.

The problem with an international law is its got to be enforced in every country that can host a website. If you have a website in Nigeria thats hosting copyrighted material then it will be more difficult to actually fully stop the site.

Maybe the answer is to accept downloading copyrighted material is always going to be around.

I'd suggest 3 things.

1. Allow selected offending sites to become subscription only and then cut the profits with the copyright holders.

2. Setup their own site that offers download links and make that subscription only.

3. Change the way copyright is sold to different countries. Make all copyrights global and allow sites, either directly or to the company who bought the rights, to charge a fee.. £2 per hour of a programme for an example.

Didn't Napster make itself in to a subscription service?

[sevenlayermuddle]

As relates to entertainment media, as we are discussing, I think the Industry bodies could improve things by being a bit more realistic.   A recent change in law made it finally legal to rip CDs that you paid for possess onto your MP3 player or home media server using, say, iTunes.  But the industry fought back and had the change in law overturned, so it is once again illegal in the UK, just as it always has been back in the days we'd rip LPs to cassette tapes for the car.

IMHO that is just petty.   They are fighting a lost cause and as far as I know nobody has ever been prosecuted, probably because they know darned well a court would likely find a way to sympathise with the 'offender'.

But as long as the rights holders behave in that silly way, rightly or wrongly, people take the view copyright is a bad law.  And then they can reconcile in their conscience taking their 'offending' to a whole new level, that of downloading content that is of real commercial value and they have never paid for.

If the public could be persuaded that copyright was a good law, I think we would see a lot less infringement.

[Ronski]

I doubt they are. Kodi is just the new name for XBMC - an opensource Media Centre.

Dray, I know exactly what Kodi is, I suggest you pop along to ebay and search for Kodi, you'll find plenty of sellers pushing fully loaded kodi boxes. These sellers are using Kodi's flexibility and installing plugins which stream pirated media from various websites. A lot of people purchase these not having a clue as to what they are doing is illegal, then when it stops working end up posting on the kodi forums complaining that kodi's crap and broken.

This gives Kodi a bad name on two fronts, users thinks it's full bugs because it stops working, and various companies see Kodi as an aid to watch pirated media, which is not it's intended purpose.

https://kodi.tv/the-piracy-box-sellers-and-youtube-promoters-are-killing-kodi/