UK Court Orders Big ISPs to Block Megashare, Viooz, Watch32 and Zmovie

A group of Hollywood movie studios have successfully won a case in London’s High Court that will require all of the country’s major broadband ISPs to block their customers from accessing the following websites – Megashare, Viooz, Watch32 and Zmovie. All were found to be facilitating Internet copyright infringement (piracy).

The ruling means that big ISPs like Sky Broadband, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, which did not contest the case, can now expect to receive a court order requiring them to block access to the sites under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. The blocking action itself is expected to begin as soon as this week.

A Spokesperson for the Federation Against Copyright Theft said (Torrentfreak):

“FACT and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) wrote to four websites asking them to stop infringing creative content. Collectively, these sites provide access to an enormous collection of films with no permission from the copyright owners. FACT, supported by the MPA, therefore took this court action.”

However critics of website blocking systems frequently warn that such approaches remain both easy to circumvent and may thus only serve to promote the existence of such websites. At the same time related sites usually find ways around such blocks, which can involve moving domains / hosts, using shared IP addresses in their DNS table (i.e. tricks the filters into blocking legitimate websites on the same IP) and setting up their own proxy servers. Credits to Recombu for spotting this.