Village Roadshow, Hollywood studios move to block piracy website SolarMovie

[h3]Village Roadshow, Hollywood studios move to block piracy website SolarMovie[/h3]

Village Roadshow, Hollywood studios move to block piracy website SolarMovie

Village Roadshow will lead an action in the Australian Federal Court backed by Hollywood studios to have internet service providers block a piracy website which facilitates the free streaming of movies and television shows such as Star Wars and The Walking Dead.

The action is the first taken to the Federal Court under the Copyright Amendment (online infringement) Act passed by the parliament which was put forward by the then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull in June last year.

The site Village Roadshow and its backers are seeking to block is SolarMovie. If successful the court case would not see Australians using the site prosecuted – it would simply stop working for users based here unless they were using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service.

The site has been blocked by court order in the United Kingdom and on Tuesday was the first site to be blocked through court action by Singapore ISPs since the its government’s own copyright legislation changes in December 2014.

Village Roadshow will be backed by Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal, Sony, Disney and 21st Century Fox, who signed off on the action overnight.

A number of rights holders are preparing proceedings that will be commenced in the Federal Court shortly, including a separate action from pay television provider Foxtel.

Village Roadshow will be backed by Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal, Sony, Disney and 21st Century Fox, who signed off on the action overnight.

A number of rights holders are preparing proceedings that will be commenced in the Federal Court shortly, including a separate action from pay television provider Foxtel.

In November, law firm Moray and Agnew asked an unnamed internet service provider, rather than the Federal Court, to block access to CHM Constructions, threatening legal action, but legal experts said that matter was unlikely to infringe on copyright.

Should the application be successful, Australian internet service providers (ISPs) such as Telstra, Optus, TPG and Dodo, will be required to block access to the infringing site.

Village Roadshow co-chief executive Graham Burke told Fairfax Media that site blocking needs to be accompanied by two initiatives.

“The legislation has to be accompanied by sincere passionate communication to win people over and we have to continue to provide product in a timely and affordable way,” Mr Burke said.

Mr Burke, a long-time anti-piracy campaigner, said that the legislation was an effective way for copyright holders to protect their content.

“The pirates, they steal other people’s creativity and they have advertising and it’s millions of dollars and they provide nothing. Not one job or any creative input into the community,” he said.

Earlier this month, Dallas Buyers Club LLC abandoned its attempts to seek cash from those it alleged of copyright infringement after Justice Nye Perram, last year, imposed strict conditions, including that it forfeit a $600,000 bond if the conditions were breached, in relation to being able to send ‘speculative invoices’ to those who allegedly downloaded the movie.

Mr Burke said the high profile case helped educate people about the threat that piracy imposes on the creative industry to those who didn’t realise or understand the implications.

SOURCE