A High Court judge has ordered BT to block the website Newzbin2, which aggregates links to pirated movies.
Although Newzbin2 doesn’t host content itself, instead making it easier for members to find movies on Usenet, the judge found in favour of the movie studios and rights holders which had sought the ruling.
Justice Arnold said that BT ‘has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows 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 of their films and television programmes.’
BT described the ruling as a ‘helpful judgement which provides clarity on this complex issue.’
The president and managing director Motion Picture Association in Europe, which represents a number of movie studios, said ‘This ruling from Justice Arnold is a victory for millions of people working in the UK creative industries and demonstrates that the law of the land must apply online.’
The Open Rights Group, however, was critical. Its copyright campaigner, Peter Bradwell, said that ‘Website blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgements won’t work to stop infringement or boost creative industries. And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown. If the goal is boosting creators’ ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand.’
The hearing was seen as a test case and could pave the way for more rights owners to pursue legal action against ISPs to force them to block infringing sites.
IP lawyer, Steve Kuncewicz, posting on Twitter, described the decision as a ‘big decision’ and said that ‘other ISPs may face similar action.’
The film industry first took action against Newzbin last year, and the high court ordered that it should remove all pirated material from the site and pay damages to the companies involved. Newzbin Ltd went into administration following the ruling, but a new version of the site, Newzbin2 appeared shortly afterwards, highlighting the difficulty in using the courts to deal with internet piracy.
