Australia's biggest telcos ordered to block international pirate websites by Federal Court

Australia's biggest telcos have been ordered to block access to 57 international websites that allow users to download pirated TV shows and movies.

The blocked piracy sites:

Yes Movies
Vumoo
Los Movies
Cartoon HD
Putlocker
Watch Series 1 and Watch Series 2
Project - Free TV
ProjectFreeTV
Watch Episodes, Watch Episode Series, Watch TV Series
The Dare TV
Putlocker9.is, Putlocker9.com
Torrent sites: 1337x
Torlock
In a ruling handed down on Friday, the Federal Court found that the websites operated with a "blatant disregard for the rights of copyright owners".

It ordered Telstra, Optus, Vocus and TPG to take "reasonable steps", within 15 days, to stop their customers accessing the websites, which include piratebay.to, watchfree.to, torrentproject.se, Yes Movies, Vumoo and Los Movies.

The decision was welcomed by industry body Creative Content Australia, which has launched a campaign to highlight the devastating financial impact of pirating on the film and television industry.

The organisation's executive director, Lori Flekser, said the ruling vindicated the position of creative industries, which had long argued that pirating prevented creators of original content from being able to fully recoup their financial investment.

"Pirate sites firstly earn a lot of money from other people's content — that's income and revenue that local and global practitioners who have worked incredibly hard on those productions don't get to see," she said.

"Piracy is not a victimless crime: the victims are the creative industries who lose jobs, who lose revenue and who lose potential jobs in the films that simply aren't made because the risks of recouping the revenue are too high."

Ms Flekser said as a result, investors were more reluctant to invest in film and television content, which reduces the amount of content made, and ultimately results in less choice for consumers.

One case was bought by eight film distributors led by Roadshow Films, while a separate case was bought by Foxtel.

Service providers must take reasonable steps: court

The court found carriage service providers must take reasonable steps to disable access to online locations outside Australia that infringe or facilitate the infringement of copyright.

The four CSPs will be required block the domain names associated with pirate streaming sites Yes Movies, Vumoo, Los Movies, Cartoon HD, Putlocker, Watch Series 1, Watch Series 2, Project - Free TV, ProjectFreeTV, Watch Episodes, Watch Episode Series, Watch TV Series, The Dare TV, Putlocker9.is, Putlocker9.com, as well as Torrent sites: 1337x and Torlock.

The court ordered the applicants establish and maintain a website that informed users that the blocked website they were attempting to access has been disabled because it infringed or facilitated the infringement of copyright.

Creative Content Australia said since the first site-blocking orders were made by the Federal Court in December 2016, more than 65 sites and more than 340 domains had been blocked.

Ms Flekser said the campaign, titled The Price of Piracy, and starring veteran Australian actor Bryan Brown, also aimed to raise awareness of the risks to consumers posed by streaming or downloading pirated content.

She said links on infringing sites were the most common way of propagating malware, with one in three sites exposing users to malicious software that can steal personal information such as bank details, credit cards and passwords.

Pirate sites have become some of the most dangerous places online," she said.

Justice John Nicholas said similar blocking orders had already been made in other countries.

In a statement, Foxtel chief executive Peter Tonagh said the judgment was "another critical step in combating online piracy, which continues to undermine Australia's creative industry".

"The Government's passage of the site blocking legislation, and the court's continued willingness to impose site blocking orders, illustrates the gravity of the threat and the concern we should all have about protecting the hard work of the actors, writers, directors and production teams involved in creating the programming we all love."

The four respondent companies did not participate or seek to be heard in the case. No costs order was made.