This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Legal
More web-blocks could be incoming in Ireland
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 8 February 2017
The web-block party could be ramped up in Ireland following the news that the movie industry there has gone to court in a bid to force eight internet service providers to block three copyright infringing websites: movie4k.to, primewire.ag and onwatchseries.to.
As previously reported, although efforts by the music and movie industries to force ISPs to block their customers from accessing piracy sites have not been quite so prolific in Ireland as they have here in the UK, the Irish labels did secure an injunction instigating a Pirate Bay blockade back in 2013. Another injunction forcing a web-block against KickassTorrents came the following year.
According to RTE, reps for the Motion Picture Association this week told the Commercial Court in Dublin that the three newly targeted websites were involved in the copyright infringement of movie and TV content on an enormous scale. The MPA’s lawyers say that research commissioned by the trade body found that, during October alone, there were 1.26 million visits from Irish IP addresses to Primewire, while Watchseries got 1.9 million and Movie4k 200,000.
Web-blocking has become a preferred anti-piracy tactic of the music and movie industries in those countries where local copyright law allows such injunctions, even though it is usually relatively easy to circumvent the blockades via a simple Google search. The latest web-block case in Ireland will return to court on 28 Feb.
