Access blocking is a legal remedy for intellectual property infringements provided under supplemental Article 4 (see Annex 4, Amendment: 3.3.2004-5101/25 within the English text linked above) of the Law No. 5846 on Intellectual & Artistic Works. This provision was introduced in March 2004 and provides a two-stage approach. Initially the law requires the hosting, content or access providers to take down the infringing content from their servers upon “notice” given to them by the right holders. The providers need to take action within 72 hrs. If the allegedly infringing content is not taken down or there is no response from the providers, the right holders can ask the Public Prosecutor to provide for a blocking order, and the blocking order is executed within 72 hours.
This is a UK government White Paper, setting out the plans to provide for a major reform of the obligations of various online services towards illegal content and user safety. It is under consultation until the 1st of July 2019. The core of the new proposals is a novel, statutory duty of care, tied to tackling illegal content in an adequate and efficient manner, as well ensuring the safety of the service's users. This duty is to be placed on a wide category of entities - “companies that allow users to share or discover user-generated content or interact with each other online”. The exact content of the duty in question is not specified yet - this is to occur through a series of corresponding codes of practice. For now, the possible obligations include: operating specific notice & takedown procedures, with corresponding...
This is a unique s.97A of the CDPA 1988 blocking injunction case, aimed at tackling copyright-infringing, live streaming of Premier League matches. The successfully obtained order (largely agreed between the parties) obliges the defendant Internet Service Providers to block the IP addresses of streaming servers during Premier League matches. A list of those servers was provided at the time the order was given, and the order specifies that this list is to be updated by the claimants every week during the Premier League season. It is of note that the blockade is to be in effect only during the live transmissions. In the rights balancing exercise, the Court found that the copyright of claimants outweighs any possible risks to the defendant ISPs' freedom to conduct a business and the users's freedom to impart or receive...
The claimants applied for a “Newzbin 2” blocking order against websites which made available and facilitated the use of the so called Popcorn Time applications (used for BitTorrent-based, illegal streaming of copyrighted content). The order was granted, with the websites’ owners found jointly liable for the infringements and the Popcorn Time application being characterised as having no legitimate purpose.
Section 56 of this Act repeals sections 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act 2010 (which warranted the introduction of specific website blocking injunctions, see below).
An owner of a website advertising escort services in South Africa found out that the UK copyright-protected pictures from his website were placed on his competitor’s website. The latter party was found to have infringed the copyright in pictures, as it was held that his website was targeted at the UK audience. The factors leading to this finding included the website’s language (English), the traffic data (10% to 25% visitors came from UK) and the website’s structure (composed of national sub-domains, connected to each other). The works were found to be communicated to the UK public.