Foxtel's legal crusade against online piracy has intensified, with the company applying to add 127 additional URLs to its proposed block list in Federal Court. The new sites under the ban hammer include YesMovies, Vumoo, LosMovies, CartoonHD, Project Free TV 1, Torlock and 1337x. Here is the full list.
As reported on Computer World, Foxtel is stepping up its attacks on so-called pirate sites in a bid to prevent internet users from accessing content it holds the rights to. This includes the HBO series Game Of Thrones, which Australians are notorious for downloading illegally.
In December last year, Foxtel and Village Roadshow successfully blocked five popular torrent websites through the courts. The five sites on the ban list were The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and SolarMovie.
Foxtel's latest application names the following websites:
- 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.
As before, Foxtel has also named multiple URLs for the sites it is seeking to block for a grand total of 127. (In other words, a simple suffix change will not be enough to circumvent the ban.)
The court will now assess the evidence in Foxtel's application to determine what action should be taken. Given the success of Foxtel's previous applications, we would be extremely surprised if an injunction was not handed down on all of the aforementioned sites. As before, internet service providers (ISPs) will have 15 days to implement the blocks.
Why I Refuse To Feel Guilty For Torrenting Game Of Thrones
One year ago my brother in-law and I made a decision. We wanted to do the right thing. We wanted to try and pay to watch Game of Thrones season 5. Analyse that sentence for a second. I’ll add some italics for emphasis. “We wanted to try and pay to watch Game of Thrones.”
In its original court application, Foxtel explained the reason for filing legal action as follows:
"A significant factor in Foxtel’s ability to attract subscribers is the exclusivity in Australia of a proportion of the programming it offers, including the Programs, the Australian premieres of which were exclusive to Foxtel's subscription television services.
"Foxtel’s programs have been, and continue to be, available without charge outside Foxtel’s subscription packages, and Foxtel has thereby suffered and will suffer loss and damage, including lost subscription fees, lost opportunity to earn subscription fees, lost opportunity to earn licensing fees, and other damage from loss of control over copyright in episodes of the Programs.
"The reason for the primary purpose of The Pirate Bay [et al] is to infringe or facilitate the infringement of copyright (whether or not in Australia.) ..[These sites] had and have the power to prevent the infringements by Internet Users [and] have chosen not to take any or any sufficient steps to prevent such infringements or continuing infringements."
The latest injunction application comes a month after the Federal Court ordered Australian ISPs to block access to Kickass Torrents websites at the behest of a consortium of music labels.
As we've mentioned in the past, the act of torrenting is completely legal and it's not all that difficult to circumvent ISP blocking of torrent websites. Here are some ways to gain access to blocked torrent sites for free.
[Via Computerworld]
Comments
I love how Foxtel does all of the work in finding new Torrent sites for people to visit.
They still haven't blocked the 2nd list they published a few months back either.
They have to spend all their subscription revenue on something... I mean they aren't going to improve the IQ3 or their product at all.
Thanks for the list Foxtel, now how do I get a VPN? :-)
VPN? just use the Opera browser a VPN is built in
I wonder how long it will be before some of these sites turn out to be fake in that they never offered the content and were only there to screw with Foxtel et. al. finding these sites to ban.
That would actually work in the sites favour, don't technically offer copyright infringing content, get banned by court, then they could sue Foxtel for banning innocent site and showing court that Foxtel is lying and not checking sites properly.
Google is going through that at the moment, many of the LEGAL documents have sites like Facebook and Imgur on it, not the infringing content, they want the whole site delisted from Google.
Disclaimer: I have Foxtel and enjoy the service, it fits my needs.
No judgement from me on that. If it suits your needs I hope you get a large amount of enjoyment from it.
Some people just hate on Foxtel for the sake of hating; they don't need a reason they just do.
It's going to be funny to learn about how much these blocks will or won't affect GoT piracy this season
If it doesn't help, then at some future court date Foxtel et al will argue:
Given foxtel destroyed the NBN via Murdoch's power over the LNP, then is destroying our privacy and right to a free and accessible Internet, I would love to see Foxtel blocked indefinitely, until they reached less than 5% paper media concentration of MSM, and less than 5% cable media ownership, and they disentangled themselves from Telstra and our Government. Foxtel is one of the greatest travesties of our Australian democracy , and it continues to abuse its monopoly and it's death grip on the Australian Governments. Murdoch lobbies for Gina, Twiggy and Banks as they own large swaths of his media companies, our media in Australia is stuffed, our governments betrayed us, now Murdoch owns our rump, he knows it, and he loves it.
Whenever I think of Foxtel, I now just think of all the reasons that Ozzie Man hates Foxtel.
Because Foxtel are *****.
Foxtel is the devil. Happy to spend my subscription money on Netflix & Stan.
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