Australia’s biggest carriage service providers have been ordered to block The Pirate Bay and a number of other copyright-infringing websites after the federal court today ruled in favour of Foxtel and Village Roadshow.

 

The movie rights holders were successful in securing injunctions under the federal government’s new piracy website blocking laws, requiring Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 to block five movie torrent sites: The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt, and SolarMovie.

 

The carriers now have 15 business days to implement the blocks in whichever method they choose: DNS, IP address, and URL blocks, or any other technical approach.

 

However, the carriers successfully fought off a bid to secure a rolling injunction regime.

 

Federal court Justice Nicholas today said he was not persuaded that rights holders should be granted the discretion to issue out-of-court orders to CSPs to block mirror domains.

 

The ruling is likely to come as a disappointment to rights holders who have throughout the case argued that the need to go through court processes to address the appearance of mirror sites  would leave them facing excessive administrative burden.

 

“This … is a known problem in the real world. It will be a problem that arises in the implementation of your honour’s orders," Richard Lancaster, the lead barrister representing rights holders, said in June.

 

"And we’re concerned - given this is the first case [of the legislation] - that a procedure be adopted that will not create a real administrative burden for the future in having to do something unnecessary and elaborate such as the CSPs suggest.”

 

The carriers argued that the difference between the administrative burden placed on rights holders to issue out-of-court notices, and seeking a new order, would be small.

 

Justice Nicholas today made it clear that he wasn’t prepared to allow any extension of an injunction application to new domains without court oversight.

 

“Whether the terms of any injunction should be varied to refer to additional domain names, IP addresses or URLs is a matter for the court to determine in light of evidence,” Justice Nicholas wrote in his judgment.

 

Telcos get their costs covered

 

The carriers were mostly successful in their bid to force the rights holders to reimburse them for the costs of implementing the blocks, and of appearing in court.

 

The court ordered Foxtel to pay Optus $1500 for compliance costs, and $50 per domain blocked to Telstra and TPG.

 

Roadshow will pay M2, Telstra and TPG $50 per domain blocked.

 

The rights holders were also ordered to pay CSPs' costs for preparing evidence and written submissions.

 

Telstra had sought to be compensated just over $10,000 to cover the cost of setting up its site blocking mechanisms. TPG had sought $21,000 if Telstra and other CSPs were successful recovering these costs.

 

Justice Nicholas rejected the rights holders’ arguments that CSPs benefited from the activity of pirate website operators.

 

“This was denied by the respondents who also submitted that the applicants’ submission is not supported by any evidence in these proceedings. On the latter point I think the respondents are correct,” he wrote.

 

Foxtel and Village Roadshow brought separate injunction applications against the CSPs late in 2015, but the court has been dealing with the two matters together due to substantial similarities between the cases.

 

The two applications are the first major attempts on the part of copyright holders to take advantage of new piracy site-blocking laws the federal government passed in June 2015.

 

The laws give copyright holders the ability to apply to the court to order CSPs to block access to online locations established for the “primary purpose” of facilitating piracy.

 

Justice Nicholas’s ruling today has substantially set the parameters in which the scheme is expected to operate.

 

The outcome of the case is also expected to impact a third injunction application brought by music rights holders against CSPs.

 

That application, launched early this year, saw a group of the country's biggest music companies led by Universal Music, along with APRA AMCOS, join forces to file an application for eight KickassTorrents domains to be blocked.

 

In that matter the parties agreed that many of their differences would be resolved by the movie rights holders case. 

 

Justice Nicholas’s ruling today is expected to provide substantial guidance to the ruling in that matter.