An Austrian ISP has been served with a preliminary injunction forcing it to block subscriber access to a popular site that offers links to unauthorized streaming movies.
The injunction was initiated against the ISP UPC by Verein für Anti-Piraterie der österreichischen Film und Videobranche (VAP) – the anti-piracy association of the Austrian film and video industry.
In October, VAP approached several ISPs with a request to block Kino.to, a popular movie streaming portal which ranks in the top 50 sites of both Germany and Austria.
Kino.to hosts no illicit content itself but indexes material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services.
Despite opposition from carrier group Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA), rightsholders said they would press on with their action, eventually singling out one ISP, UPC, to block Kino.to.
As reported this week by Gigaom, that action has now proved successful and UPC has to block subscriber access to Kino.to.
In total more than 1500 IP addresses and nine domains were listed on a VAP blocking “wish list” including sites such as MegaVideo.com, duckload.com, Freeload.to, Speedload.to and Archive.to.
It is unclear whether VAP, on the back of this victory against Kino.to, will now seek injunctions against these other sites.
