Foxtel wins bid to block 17 piracy sites Australia wide

[grimm]

The Federal Court has ordered Australian ISPs to block 127 separate domains, but some of those sites are already on the move.

Accessing pirate sites on the interwebs just got that little bit harder in Australia.

In a four-month-long case between Foxtel and Australia's biggest internet service providers, the Federal Court of Australia has ordered ISPs to block access to 15 pirate streaming sites and two torrent sites within three weeks. In total, 127 domains (many of them URLs that differ by just a few letters or numbers) are set to be blocked.

But in a sign of just how difficult site-blocking is, a number of those sites have already moved themselves. 

Foxtel brought the case in May as part of a long-running battle against pirate sites, which has played out in the courts in recent months under the government's anti-piracy site-blocking legislation.

Last year, Foxtel (alongside Village Roadshow) won a bid to block The Pirate Bay, alongside other torrenting sites. In April this year, the Federal court also ordered Aussie ISPs to block torrenting site Kickass Torrents (though in that case, Foxtel appeared in the case as a responding ISP, thanks to its double-threat role as content producer and internet provider).

Today's decision is another step forward for rights holders, not just Foxtel, who have long been pushing to cut off supply for Australia's pirating habit.

The Federal Court has given ISPs -- including iiNet, TPG, Telstra, Optus, Virgin Mobile and Dodo -- 15 business days to take "reasonable steps" to disable the online locations. The sites can be blocked using DNS blocking, IP address blocking or rerouting or URL blocking. However a number of the domains listed in the court ruling have already disappeared, with the URLs now redirecting to web hosting pages from GoDaddy. 

The full list of sites to be blocked includes:

YesMovies
Vumoo
LosMovies
CartoonHD
Putlocker
Watch Series 1
Watch Series 2
Project Free TV 1
Project Free TV 2
Watch Episodes
Watch Episode Series
Watch TV Series
The Dare Telly
Putlocker9.is
Putlocker9.to
Torlock
1337x

Foxtel CEO Peter Tonagh welcomed the court order, saying it was another "critical step" in combating the piracy that undermines Australia's creative industry.

"The Government's passage of the site blocking legislation, and the Court's continued willingness to impose site blocking orders, illustrates the gravity of the threat and the concern we should all have about protecting the hard work of the actors, writers, directors and production teams involved in creating the programming we all love," Tonagh wrote in an emailed statement. 

"We will continue to do our part in shedding light on the seriousness of intellectual property theft, while simultaneously helping to ensure our content is available quickly, easily and at a price that suits their budgets."