NIPC Law

Royal Courts of Justice Author DCastor   Public Domain Dedication   Source Wikipedia, Royal Courts of Justice Jane Lambert Chancery Division (Mr Justice Miles) Capitol Records and others v British Telecommunications Plc and others [2021] EWHC 409 (Ch) (25 Feb 2021 This was an application by representatives of the British sound recording industry for an order under s.97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 requiring the 6 largest internet service providers in the UK accounting for 91% of the fixed-line internet market to block their subscribers' access to a website known as "NitroFlare" on the grounds that that site infringed the claimants' copyrights on a massive scale.  The application came on before Mr Justkce Miles on 3 Feb 2021. In  Capitol Records and others v British Telecommunications Plc and others [ 2021] EWHC 409 (Ch), which he handed down on 25 Feb 2021, he grated the claimants' application. The Legislation S.97A provides: "(1) The Hig...

In Injunctions against ISPs I discussed Mr. Justice Arnold's judgment in Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v British Telecommunications Plc [2011] EWHC 2714 (Ch) (26 Oct 2011) where he ordered BT to use Cleenfeed to hinder its subscribers from accessing the website known as Newzbin II. That judgment was applauded by those who lobby on behalf of the film, recording, games, publishing and other creative industries though by no means everybody in the industries themselves. I saw such lobbyists at work some years ago during consultations at the Patent Office on the implementation of the enforcement directive. For convenience I refer to them as Big Copyright. Scarlet Less than a month afterwards the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in C-70/10 Scarlet Extended SA v SABAM [2011] EUECJ C-70/10 (24 Nov 2011) that a number of Council directives precludes an injunction that compels an ISP to install monitoring software "which is cap...

On 26 Oct 2011, Mr. Justice Arnold ordered British Telecommunications Plc to: "adopt the following technical means to block or attempt to block access by its customers to the website known as Newzbin2 currently accessible at www.newzbin.com, its domains and sub-domains and including payments.newzbin.com and any other IP address or URL whose sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to the Newzbin2 website. The technical means to be adopted are: (i) IP address re-routing in respect of each and every IP address from which the said website operates and which is notified in writing to the Respondent by the Applicants or their agents; and (ii) DPI-based URL blocking utilising at least summary analysis in respect of each and every URL available at the said website and its domains and sub-domains and which is notified in writing to the Respondent by the Applicants or their agents." This order was granted upon the application of a group of film and TV programme ...

In Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Others v Newzbin Ltd . [2010] EWHC 608 (Ch), [2010] ECC 13, [2010] FSR 21, [2010] EMLR 17, [2010] ECDR 8, members of the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. ( "the MPAA" ) sued an English company called Newzbin Ltd . ( "Newzbin" ) in the Chancery Division for copyright infringement. Newzbin operated a website through which subscribers could search the Usenet for files that members of the public had posted download and view them. I explained how the Usenet worked in my article Reflections on Newzbin which I posted to my chambers website on 2 Sep 2010. Much, though by no means all of the matter posted to the Usenet infringes copyright including the copyrights of some of the MPAA's member studios in their films and television shows. The way that was done was to digitize a film, TV programme, sound recording, book or other work - that is to say, convert it into sequences of ones and noughts known as binari...