Suw Charman-Anderson Jul
29, 2011
The creative industries continue to bully internet service providers (ISPs) in their quest to crush file sharing sites, despite increasing evidence that so-called piracy is good for business.
Last week, Reliance BIG Pictures got a broad “John Doe” court order from the Delhi High Court to force ISPs to block file sharing websites that were sharing the film Singham. The order requires ISPs to prevent users from accessing Singham, rather than to block specific sites, but the end effect is the same. Users of Airtel Broadband, Zylog and MTNL Triband found themselves unable to access file sharing sites such as MediaFire.
Meanwhile in the UK, the High Court has ordered BT, the UK’s leading telecoms company and ISP, to block a single site, Newzbin 2 at the request of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The MPA is the international counterpart of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and represents big Hollywood studios such as Warner, Disney and Fox.
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