The first test of anti-piracy actions under new legislation passed last year could soon see major piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked by most of the country’s ISPs.The new legislation passed last year allowed rights-holders to petition the cour…
The first test of anti-piracy actions under new legislation passed last year could soon see major piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked by most of the country's ISPs.
The new legislation passed last year allowed rights-holders to petition the court and force ISPs to block piracy sites, but it isn't until now that rights-holders have decided to take up this option.
Deciding to test the waters, local movie studio Roadshow Films and subscription TV provider Foxtel have petitioned the Federal Court to block several piracy related sites, including the Pirate Bay. Other sites that have been targeted by Foxtel includes Torrentz, isoHunt and TorrentHound, with Roadshow primarily targeting streaming site SolarMovie.
But the rights-holders have already run into problems with the process, and ISPs have already expressed concern at the technical side of things.
Under the law, rights-holders are required to formally contact the owners of the sites they wish to have blocked before proceeding with legal action. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the piracy scene, it can be extremely difficult to locate real contact details of site owners. Many sites are also cloned or proxied, making it a time consuming process to contact all of the involved site owners.
The lawyer representing both companies, Richard Lancaster, has informed the court that 61 sites need to be contacted, but only 43 have been notified so far. Lancaster noted that for some sites, "there's no obvious or indeed unobvious mechanism for getting in touch with the operators of the sites."
The 50 ISPs being asked to block these sites have so far chosen not to mount a defence, but some have expressed concern at the method of blocking that Foxtel and Roadshow have demanded. ISPs like TPG, Australia's second largest ISP, want to deploy a DNS based blocking method, while Foxtel has demanded IP and URL based blocking, with the option of adding more IP addresses to be blocked as needed in the future.
"We wish to seek to negotiate an arrangement for DNS blocking. If [Foxtel] were pushing for a broader blocking mechanism that might be an issue," a legal representative for TPG warned.
Rights-holders and ISPs return to court on May 6, when they will settle this and other technical matters related to the blocking.