The landmark ruling, which opens the floodgates for perhaps tens of thousands of other sites to be blocked at the ISP level, contained some surprise information on the costs involved in blocking infringing websites. The amounts cited by Justice Arnold all involve previous actions undertaken by the movie and music industry against sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

The applications themselves

The solicitor acting for Richemont, Simon Baggs of Wiggin LLP, also acted for the movie studios in their website blocking applications. Information Baggs provided to the court reveals that an unopposed application for a section 97A blocking order works out at around £14,000 per website.

The record labels’ costs aren’t revealed but Justice Arnold said “it is safe to assume that they are of a similar magnitude to the costs incurred by the film studios.”

In copyright cases, 47 sites have been blocked at the ISP level = £658,000

Keeping blocked sites blocked

When blocking orders are issued in the UK they contain provisions for rightsholders to add additional IP addresses and URLs to thwart anti-blocking countermeasures employed by sites such as The Pirate Bay. It is the responsibility of the rightsholders to “accurately identify IP addresses and URLs which are to be notified to ISPs in this way.”

It transpires that in order to monitor the server locations and domain names used by targeted websites, the film studios have hired a company called Incopro, which happens to be directed by Simon Baggs of Wiggins.

In addition to maintaining a database of 10,000 ‘pirate’ domains, Incopro also operates ‘BlockWatch’. This system continuously monitors the IP addresses and domains of blocked sites and uses the information to notify ISPs of new IPs and URLs to be blocked.

“Incopro charges a fee to enter a site into the BlockWatch system. It also charges an ongoing monthly fee,” Justice Arnold reveals. “In addition, the rightholders incur legal costs in collating, checking and sending notifications to the ISPs. Mr Baggs’ evidence is that, together, these costs work out at around £3,600 per website per year.”

If we assume that the music industry’s costs are similar, for 47 sites these monitoring costs amount to around £169,200 per year, every year.

Costs to ISPs for implementing blocking orders

The ISPs involved in blocking orders have been less precise as to the costs involved, but they are still being incurred on an ongoing basis. All incur ongoing costs when filtering websites such as those on the Internet Watch List, but copyright injunctions only add to the load.

Sky

The cost of implementing a new copyright blocking order is reported as a “mid three figure sum” by Sky, with an update to an order (adding new IP addresses, for example) amounts to half of that. Ongoing monitoring of blocked domains costs the ISP a “low four figure sum per month.”

BT

According to the court, BT says that it expends 60 days of employee time per year implementing section 97A orders via its Cleanfeed system and a further 12 days employee time elsewhere.

Each new order takes up 8 hours of in-house lawyers’ time plus 13 hours of general staff time. Updates to orders accrue an hour of costs in the legal department plus another 13 hours of blocking staff time.

EE

For each new order EE expends 30 minutes of staff time and a further three hours of time at BT whose staff it utilizes. Updates cost the same amount of time.

EE pays BT a “near four figure sum” for each update and expends 36 hours employee time each year on maintenance and management.

TalkTalk

TalkTalk’s legal team expends two hours implementing each new order while its engineers spend around around two and a half. Updates are believed to amount to the same. The company’s senior engineers burn through 60 hours each year dealing with blocking orders amounting to “a low six figure sum” per annum.

Virgin

Virgin estimates that Internet security staff costs amount to a “low five figure sum” per year. Interestingly the ISP said it spent more on blocking this year than last, partly due to its staff having to respond to comments about blocking on social media.

And the bills are only set to increase

According to Justice Arnold several additional blocking orders are currently pending. They are:

- An application by Paramount Home Entertainment Ltd and other film studios relating to seven websites said to be “substantially focused” on infringement of copyright in movies and TV shows

- An application by 1967 Ltd and other record companies in respect of 21 torrent sites

- An application by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp and other film studios in respect of eight websites said to be “substantially focused” on infringement of copyright in movies and TV shows

But these 36 new sites to be blocked on copyright grounds are potentially just the tip of a quite enormous iceberg now that blocking on trademark grounds is being permitted.

Richemont has identified approximately 239,000 sites potentially infringing on their trademarks, 46,000 of which have been confirmed as infringing and are waiting for enforcement action.

So who will pick up the bill?

“It is obvious that ISPs faced with the costs of implementing website orders have a choice. They may either absorb these costs themselves, resulting in slightly lower profit margins, or they may pass these costs on to their subscribers in the form of higher subscription charges,” Justice Arnold writes.

Since all ISPs will have to bear similar costs, it seems likely that the former will prove most attractive to them, as usual.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents are blocked in several countries around the EU and in the UK, for example, dozens of ‘pirate’ domains are now blocked at the ISP level.

A notable case originating from Austria, however, has been on hold pending a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union. The dispute saw movie companies Constantin Film Verleih and Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft complain that local ISP UPC Telekabel Wien had been providing subscriber access to illegal streaming site Kino.to, a site now shuttered following police action.

The movie companies previously obtained interim injunctions to have UPC block the site, despite UPC arguing that it couldn’t be held responsible for a site that it had absolutely nothing to do with. UPC also noted that there was no court ruling indicating its customers had broken the law.

To settle the matter the Austrian Supreme Court asked the Court of Justice to clarify whether a company that provides Internet access to those using an illegal website could be required to block that site. Today the Court of Justice handed down its long-awaited decision.

The Court found that a person who makes copyrighted material available to the public without permission from rightsholders is using the services of the Internet service provider of the people accessing that content. EU law does not require a specific relationship between the person infringing copyright and the intermediary against whom any injunction has been issued, the Court found.

Addressing UPC’s concerns that none of its customers had been deemed by a court to have acted unlawfully, the EU Court said that proof was not necessary as the law is in place not only to bring an end to infringement, but also to prevent it.

The EU Court added that since any ISP targeted by an injunction is free to carry out its obligations in a way that fits its circumstances, blocking orders do not therefore restrict an ISP’s freedom to conduct its business.

Any injunction must, however, must be proportional so as not to unnecessarily stop subscribers from lawfully accessing information. Furthermore, any blocking measures must have the effect of preventing access to copyrighted content or at least make it more difficult. National courts are required to ensure that these conditions are met.

The take-home from today’s ruling, which follows last year’s advice from the Advocate General, is clear: ISPs can be required to block access to infringing sites but any injunction must be balanced and proportional.

_{Photo: Dan Zen}

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Filters of most kinds are incredibly blunt instruments that lack the finesse to deal with the complex nature of the online world. Sadly, it didn’t take long for them to live up to that billing.

During the past few months dozens of innocent sites have been blocked – TorrentFreak included – a situation that really hits the credibility of what the government has been trying to achieve.

Blocking entities such as charities and drug advice sites obviously leads to terribly bad publicity, so the government has been looking at ways to deal with the problem. According to the BBC a working group has been looking into accidental blocking with a view to finding a solution. They believe one has been found.

The idea is that some kind of master white-list will be drawn up containing sites that have already been wrongly blocked or might find themselves subjected to wrongful blocking in the future. That list would then be passed around Internet service providers so that filters could be tweaked to avoid the censorship of innocent domains. Charities are involved in the creation of the list so it appears public service sites may be a priority.

Also under discussion is the creation of a mechanism which would allow the owners of regular but wrongly-blocked websites to contact ISPs in order to have their sites added to the white-list.

“There’s a feeling that some sites sit in a gray area and more needs to be done for them,” a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association told the BBC.

While it is commendable that the government is looking into the problem of over-blocking, one has to question why the filtering mechanisms being put in place aren’t erring on the side of caution. If some sites are in a “gray area” then they should be given the benefit of the doubt, not found guilty until proven innocent.

If a system can’t tell the difference between a sex education charity and a porn site there must be something seriously wrong. A white-list is probably just a Band-Aid.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Following requests to the High Court by the music and movie industries, BitTorrent, Usenet and streaming indexes are now being blocked, rendered entirely inaccessible by the nation’s six largest service providers.

Although controversial, the reasons why sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and Movie2K are being blocked are now clear. Once ISPs have “actual knowledge” that their services are being used by their subscribers to infringe copyright, they are put on notice by the High Court to block the sites in question.

However, it has become somewhat tiresome to learn that when injunctions are handed down by the High Court to ISPs, they appear to fall into some kind of informational black hole – fitting perhaps for a document authorizing censorship.

To try and find out what these injunctions contain TorrentFreak previously spoke with one of the leading ISPs who assured us that the documents aren’t actually secret. However, when we requested a copy we were told that they couldn’t send us one and we would have to go to the Court instead. No luck there – and the BPI weren’t exactly forthcoming either.

Now the Open Rights Group is reporting that it too has been trying to get to the bottom of the website injunction blackout. ORG’s Jim Killock says everyone could benefit from their publication.

“Accountability, fewer errors and less confusion about what is happening should be the result,” he says.

Killock reveals that ORG has also asked ISPs to cooperate but they too have been met with reluctance.

“Possibly [the ISPs] feel that copyright owners asking for the orders may find publication by an ISP provocative. This means we are obliged to ask the courts for the documents, in order that we can publish and analyse their contents,” he explains.

But ORG found that the courts didn’t want to help either, turning down the group’s requests to view the injunctions.

“They have done this because, they say, ‘judgement has not been entered’ or ‘service has not been acknowledged’. At present the rules governing access to court documents only permit access to these orders as of right once the litigation has finished,” Killock explains.

“The courts seem to be treating blocking injunctions as if they were like temporary injunctions made while proceedings are still going on. In fact the injunctions are the end of the section 97A process. Nothing more is intended to happen.”

With this in mind, ORG have applied to have a procedural judge review the group’s requests in order to gain access, at least in the first instance, to the injunctions issued to the ISPs against Fenopy, H33t and KickassTorrents.

“We hope to persuade the Master that a section 97A blocking injunction should be treated like any final judgment in court and be available to the public as of right. If we cannot do that, we will ask the Master’s permission to have access to the orders,” Killock concludes.

ORG is also maintaining 451unavailable.org, a site dedicated to tracking UK blocking requests. It’s currently a little out of date in respect of all injunctions issued so far, but it’s hoped that ORG will soon be able to publish information obtained from the courts to this resource.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The release went viral and by now more than 200,000 people have installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy with this and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. However, Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet.

Today MAFIAAFire delivers a new release that aims to thwart the increasing censorship efforts in countries worldwide. Named “The Pirate Bay Dancing,” the Firefox add-on undoes local DNS and IP blocks by routing users through a series of randomly picked proxies.

The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that the development of the plugin was partly motivated by SOPA and PIPA, the pending anti-piracy bills in the US.

“DNS and IP blocking is probably the most dangerous part of SOPA/PIPA in terms of ‘breaking the Internet,’ so we tackled that first. We will be going after the other parts of SOPA in later releases but probably not in ‘our usual plugin form’ – the other parts require different solutions that we have already started work on,” we were told.

Although the add-on carries The Pirate Bay in its name it also works with other sites such as Newsbin2 and BTJunkie which are blocked in the UK and Italy respectively. In a broader sense it can also be used to bypass national “firewalls” such as in China, and soon perhaps the US.

Putting the add-on to work only requires two clicks and is completely free.

After the add-on is installed users can specify the websites for which they want it to work, and these sites then trigger a response from the plugin. If someone from Italy for example chooses to unblock The Pirate Bay, the add-on will save this preference and load the site through a proxy on the next visit.

MAFIAAFire is using thousands of proxies which will be rotated constantly, hence the (dirty) dancing. The current version is fully working but TorrentFreak was told that the functionality will be expanded in future releases.

The MAFIAAFire team told TorrentFreak that they were eager to help The Pirate Bay out, as the site’s operators have been an inspiration to them. The Pirate Bay team on their turn will soon feature the add-on on their homepage.

“Saving TPB was a big deal to us, we love the site and how it has stood the test of time while dozens of others fell, bent over or were run over. The MAFIAA have been trying to take down TPB’s sails for years, country by country, this extends its life a little more to give it smooth sailing,” TorrentFreak was told.

“In the bigger picture, other than the US’ SOPA we also have each country experimenting with its own mini-firewall. This makes all those blocks in all those countries, and all the millions the MAFIAA have spent to get to there, useless,” the MAFIAAFire team added.

While the latest MAFIAAFire add-on shows how easy it is to bypass these censorship attempts, supporters of the measures would argue that it will nonetheless stop the vast majority of casual pirates.

The creators of “The Pirate Bay Dancing” are not ignorant of this, but aside from delivering a working product, one of their main goals is to send a signal that censorship is never the right path to take. Judging from the recognition they’ve received so far, they sure have succeeded on that front.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Website blocking is a matter of significant public interest. We’re concerned that proposals for this censorship scheme are developing in the shadows,” writes peter Bradwell on ORG.

“So together with Article 19, Index on Censorship, and Global Partners we’re asking that the rights holders involved make the proposals public as soon as possible. They should be subject to a proper open debate.”

ORG have also placed a Freedom of Information request in order to obtain the details of previous meetings. That request can be seen here.

The ORG letter to the BPI is printed in full below:

Dear Geoff,

Jim Killock
Executive Director
Open Rights Group

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Nevertheless, two of the largest opposition parties in Danish parliament think it is a good idea , despite the ineffectiveness of the block , to streamline the process, making it quicker and easier to do. A proposal (Danish) before the government seems to create a tribunal to handle these cases.

Whereas in the past cases have involved a rights holder suing an ISP and forcing a block through the courts, this proposal creates a tribunal to do it instead. This tribunal will apparently consist of members appointed by government ministers, who will then rule on blocks with no judicial oversight. Any sites blocked would have to go through the courts to appeal and the site would remain blocked unless and until successful.

If that was not bad enough, there is also talk of a secretariat that would handle ‘simple’ cases, so the appointed tribunal would not even have to hear the majority of cases. Cases would be put to the tribunal by copyright holders that feel they have had their rights infringed by the target site. As with the court cases, though, it’s extremely unlikely that the accused site will be invited or even made aware of any such proceedings, and allowed to state their case.

“This is a wet dream for organizations like IFPI,” is the view of Ole Husgaard, chairman of the Danish Pirate Party. “This isn’t even a law proposal, so there is not all the work usually done in our parliament when passing laws; this can be passed in a month or two. If it is, I would guess that we will have at least 2000 sites on the blocking list within 12 months – without a single court case having been decided, if any get started at all.”

He’s not alone in his pessimism. “It’s blatant censorship of course.” is the opinion of The Pirate Bay’s brokep. “It’s not in the interest of the citizens, so I hope the government understands that if they go against the people like that, they should be replaced. It is also not a huge step before they start censoring other stuff – let’s say political parties that have thoughts about changing the current government.”

As analysis of the Pirate Bay block has found it contrary to EU laws, it’s curious as to the motivation behind this proposal. The only rational one would be bribery , either legal or not , and so the question we are forced to ask is, are Danish politicians cheaper to buy than those in New York?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.