Rights Holders Gain More Control to Block UK Access to Internet Piracy Sites
The High Court has granted rights holders, such as Columbia Pictures and others, more flexibility to require the UK’s major broadband ISPs (e.g. BT, EE, Plusnet, Virgin Media, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk) to block customers from accessing websites that have been found to facilitate internet copyright infringement (piracy).
At present ISPs subject to blocking orders, which in the UK usually flow from Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), have over the past 16 years or so become very common. Hundreds of sites have been blocked through this approach (thousands if you include their many proxies and mirrors), which usually include file sharing (P2P / Torrent), streaming sites, Sci-Hub and those that sell counterfeit goods etc.
Since then, we’ve also seen similar kinds of restrictions being imposed via some third-party Domain Name System (DNS) providers and efforts have also been made to target Virtual Private Networks (VPN) in some countries, as well as CDN providers and internet search engines etc. But keeping up with the ability of serious copyright infringers to rapidly change websites remains a common and often costly problem.
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However, the new ruling – ‘Columbia Pictures and others v British Telecommunications and others’ (Case ID: IL-2025-000240), which has not yet been published in public, appears to represent a new generation of UK blocking orders that ISPs will soon need to contend with.
According to the MPA and TorrentFreak, it allows Columbia Pictures, Disney, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros (claimants in the case) to seek blocking of any “structurally infringing audiovisual piracy services that meet defined criteria, without having to bring a fresh court application for each new domain or site name available in the future … This is particularly important where piracy operators use generic, descriptive, or frequently changing names to avoid being captured by brand-based or domain-specific orders“.
MPA Summary
The Court accepted that this broader form of relief was necessary and proportionate in light of the scale and evolving nature of the problem of online infringements, the operational burden of repeated applications, and the demonstrated responsible use of site blocking remedies by rights holders over many years.
The order has a duration of 6 months and can be extended also depending on an ex-post reporting obligation, requiring rights holders to submit to the Court information on implementation and effectiveness, thereby preserving judicial oversight and accountability. This type of order does not require expanding intermediary liability but rather ensuring that existing no-fault injunction mechanisms remain practically effective in rapidly evolving online environments.
This development is particularly relevant in light of recent changes in the technical and operational behavior of piracy operators. While fully autonomous “agentic AI” systems are not yet known to be widely used in the piracy ecosystem, several technological developments are already materially lowering the barriers to large-scale domain hopping and evasive schemes, so that pirate operators can now rapidly deploy cloned streaming sites using openly available codebases and low-cost automated domain registration systems, often combined with bulk registration APIs and redirect-based migration strategies.
As a result, infringing services increasingly operate through rotating networks of domains, including generic or non-brand-related names specifically designed to evade traditional domain-specific or brand-based blocking measures. In some cases, operators maintain multiple interchangeable domains with substantially identical infrastructure, content libraries and functionality, allowing users to be seamlessly redirected to replacement domains.
Essentially, the new approach is much more automated and appears to cut out a fair bit of the process cost, at least for Rights Holders, in order to deliver both more rapid blocking and even unblocking, where needed. But it’s difficult to know how far this goes without being able to see a copy of the final legal text, and what, if any, safeguards might be in place to reduce the risk of accidental overclocking (lack of transparency).
Admittedly, this is still very much a game of whack-a-mole for Rights Holders, but the new order may help them to keep pace.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Piracy is almost always a service problem rather than a pricing problem. If streaming sites or pay TV prodivers aren’t providing a good product, or are providing an inferior product to what illegal streaming sites offer, then people will go there instead.
Exactly. If they want to stop piracy, provide a better product. Otherwise, to the seven seas we go!
Nah, price definitely plays a part.
Usually when I hear people boasting about using dodgy IPTV, price is usually mentioned.
That said, there are problems with legitimate services e.g. the 3PM rule, Sky Stream not having local DVR, content being fractured between services, geofencing, etc.
In practice, I’d say it comes down to multiple issues.
Price plays a part but it’s true that most people who pirate do so because the service is bad or just nonexistent
As someone who previously made a living in the world of anti-piracy for a big streaming platform I know this is really not true. It’s an excuse rolled out by people who want to excuse and justify their avoidance of paying. As with anything, you can find a small grain of truth, but fundamentally most people who engage in piracy consumption are doing it to avoid paying most of the time. There’s also often a significant amount of “sticking it to the man” but again, that’s just convenient because it’s rebellion without real consequence.
The fact is that a lot of the time pirate websites suck from a service perspective and they do a whole load of dubious things relating to scripts they load or ad networks they use. Many of the sites we investigated also were involved in related criminal activities, such as money laundering and tax evasion. There’s even been some platforms run by gangs linked to people trafficking and drugs. But people will dismiss that because it’s an inconvenient truth.
Research showed that most of the grey market Android boxes used for IPTV contained malware/Trojans, so that’s great for consumers from a service perspective.
Let’s remember that overall streaming isn’t actually a profitable business for most companies who actually pay for their content. Netflix took years to make a profit and they’re still carrying a huge amount of debt. Disney was losing a significant amount of money on their platform last time I heard. None of the sports streaming companies are making a profit from what I know. Because it’s hard and damned expensive to do it legally.
People need to stop pretending they have some right to pirate content because they want to and stop pretending it’s anything other than “because we can”. Legitimate services are convenient and spend a great deal of time making their services accessible.
@Bob
Services are broadly anti-consumer now across the board. If we were having this conversation 19 years ago when Netflix took off, carried all the content, didn’t have adds and was a single, clean, clear unified interface with user ratings and other useful capabilities you might have an argument. But those days are now long behind us.
Instead we have a mish mash of 30+ services with a hugely fragmented offering. Coultless variations of UI’s with some downright terrible (Amazon Prime) to “meh” (Netflix). Most of the apps are trash, bug ridden, don’t work on all devices, don’t work on televisions from even 5 years ago and are mostly difficult to use and set up. Most massively promoting and pushing ads on every page and in every menu. Most making content so actively difficult to find that you literally need ANOTHER website to tell you where a particular series is actually available (justwatch).
Then there’s the cost. Netflix, Disney and others have raised prices massively in the past few years while also introducing ads, reducing functionality and limiting features at the same time. Of COURSE cost is a major concern or issue because if you want to see all the “good” content, you need to be subbed to 4 or 5 services permanently. Either that or you’re managing multiple subs and subbing/cancelling non stop on a cycle witht he content to save money. Want to see them all add free and in best quality you’re looking at circa £100 a month and that’s conservative and only for TV series. Factor in live sport and events and you’re looking upwards of £300 a MONTH. If you’d not noticed all at the same time that there’s a cost of living crisis.
So we’ve gone from one service that streams everything for a single cost with lots of free sport on terrestrial TV to 30+ all charging greater and greater costs for less and less a service all the time pushing more and more ads.
So definitely it is absolutely a service issue. You want the proof? Look at the music industry. Piracy is niche and broadly eliminated and you know why? Services exist where you can get almost all the content for a single reasonable fee. It’s cheap, easy and for most people you get everything you need from one single service. Want another example? Steam hasn’t eliminated all piracy in gaming but it’s certainly massively reduced it. A fantastic UI with user friendly addons (like the family library) and lots of cheap gaming offers all the time. Most people buy every single game on the platform.
I will agree with you on one point – people do need to stop acting like they have a right to content, that *IS* absolutely wrong. But likewise the industry needs to stop pretending this is anything other than a service and cost issue. A decent service at a fair price eliminates piracy – something that’s been proven at least twice before and pretending this is anything other than that is just being disingenuous.
Another step towards imitating the great firewall of China. At least the likes of Surfshark, express and Nord will make a killing
Funniest thing Ive read this week.
Come and get me then.
I’ll still sail the high seas and no one will stop me.
Yeah. Good luck stopping anyone remotely motivated. And those poor destitute little studios are going bust over it. (They aren’t of course.)
That’s why I use a small ISP
Shh. They’ll soon come after those, too.
This will achieve nothing. People who know how to torrent will just will use VPNs or the TOR network.
Bypassing ISP & government enforced blocks is childs play for anyone with half a brain.
I used to pirate a lot of my content in my teens but when things like Netflix and music streaming services came along with no ads, a monthly fee and pretty much anything I wanted to watch, it was amazing and I turned my back on piracy. But, with more streaming services than ever, it’s now harder than ever to find one that covers most things I want to watch and due to increased competition for movies, TV shows, etc, the price of these services is just getting higher and higher with no let up in sight. Not only that, the inclusion of ads, and the reduction in picture quality unless again, you pay more, is becoming unworkable for me so I’m off to the seas and I hate myself for it.
I pretty much used to do the same including IPTV. Ended up buying physical 4k movies and making do with Freeview, only streaming site I’ll use it looks like Amazon prime due to using Amazon a lot. Blueray 4k looks amazing not compressed, I know you can torrent big remux files but can’t be bothered and I’ll wait for deals on any classics on 4k!
And no one bothers about corporate enshitification / legalised ‘cartels’ bluntly exploiting ‘consumers’, along with the great ofcon supposedly acting for consumers, no wonder theres an ‘underworld’ of those that workaround those acting for the corporations that can afford the legal machinations. And how much money of the media companies actually get back to the artists, rather than just sloshes around their ‘overheads, and ‘piracy’ chasing rather than improving service and cost for consumers.
Where do we think this is all going, and haves and have nots. Consumers are just being corraled for the benifit of corporations and not really society or community rather akin to forcing streaming rather than over the air transmission, more coralling of consumers.