Judge issues blocking order in music copyright case

The order was granted today by Mr Justice Arnold, after he found that the Court had jurisdiction. He said the Court needed to satisfy four questions: (1) are the defendants service providers? (2) are the users and/or the operators of the websites infringing copyright? (3) do the users and/or the operators of the websites use the defendants' services to do that? (4) do the defendants have actual knowledge of this? Reviewing the facts and the law, he answered yes to each question.

The three Bittorrent indexing sites blocked are KAT, H33T and Fenopy. The ruling follows similar decisions involving Newzbin and Dramatico.

Since those decisions, the Austrian Supreme Court has referred two questions to the CJEU concerning infringement by users and operators (Case C-314/12 UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH v Constantin Film Verleih GmbH). Arnold reviewed those questions but decided they did not affect the result of this case.

The music companies were represented by barristers Ian Mill QC, Edmund Cullen QC, Tom Richards and Shane Sibbel and law firm Forbes Anderson Free.

The ISPs (BSkyB, BT, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, Telefonica and Virgin Media) were not represented.