In a landmark ruling, the UK's largest Internet Service Provider ("ISP") has been ordered by the High Court to block access to a website.
Twentieth Century Fox and five other well known film production companies and studios including Warner Bros and Disney, all of which are members of the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. ("MPA"), brought the action against British Telecommunications Plc ("BT") to try to prevent access to the Newzbin2 website. This website is a member's only website which collates large amounts of illegally copied material including films, music, and computer games.
This is an important test case as it is the first time that Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ("the Act") has been used against an ISP. Section 97A of the Act gives courts the power to grant an injunction against an ISP if it had "actual knowledge" that someone had used its service to infringe copyright.
Mr Justice Arnold found that the applicants had been able to show that BT had "actual knowledge" of persons using its service to infringe copyright, and that "the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the Studios in large numbers."
Mr Justice Arnold granted the order, largely on the terms requested, and BT will now use its blocking technology, CleanFeed, to block the site. CleanFeed, is currently used by BT to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse, however whether this software is sufficiently sophisticated to address this problem is yet to be seen.
MPA commented that: "This court action was never an attack on ISPs but we do need their co-operation..." MPA has signalled its intention to pursue other ISPs following the test case.
However, the decision has been criticised by some commentators who consider website blocking to be ineffective. Already it has been reported that the operators behind Newzbin2 have developed new software that they claim would circumvent the CleanFeed system.
Details of the order and how the blocking will be implemented are to be decided on later this month when the parties are due back in court.
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