NIPC Law

In Dramatico Entertainment Ltd and Others v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd and Others [2012] EWHC 268 (Ch) (20 Feb 2012) Mr. Justice Arnold concluded that both users and the operators of the Pirate Bay website infringed the copyrights of the claimants (and those they represent) in the UK. That had been the trial of preliminary issues that Mr. Justice Henderson had ordered in respect of applications by various businesses in the music industry for injunctions requiring the defendant internet service providers to block access to The Pirate Bay under s.97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 .   I wrote about the case in  "Injunctions against ISPs Part III: Dramatico Entertainment Ltd and Others v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd. and Others " (21 Feb 2012). In  Dramatico Entertainment Ltd and Others v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd and Others  (No. 2) [2012] EWHC 1152 (Ch) (02 May 2012) the judge granted the blocking order. Analysing s.97A the judge directed...

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...