Irish courts issued orders to the nation’s internet service providers to block websites said to enable video content piracy.
The Motion Pictures Association (the international branch of the Motion Pictures Association of America) filed the suit with Ireland’s High Court. The suit alleges that several websites gave up to 1.5 million people in Ireland access to unlicensed video content, either through streaming or peer-to-peer file transfers.
Earlier today the High Court agreed with the charges and ordered Ireland’s eight largest internet service providers to prevent their subscribers from accessing the websites.
In a statement issued to The Irish Examiner, MPA chief Stan McCoy said, “Preventing these pirate sites from freely disturbing other people’s work will help us provide greater job security for the 18,000 people employed through the Irish film industry.”
Releasing the Copyright Hounds
The first two weeks of 2018 has already seen a raft of lawsuits by the entertainment industry against alleged content pirates.
In the United States, Dish Network went after content distributors in Maryland and Texas. An industry group also sued a California distributor of Android set-top boxes. Yet another lawsuit targeted set-top box distributors in Singapore.
If the entertainment industry keeps up this pace, we could be seeing hundreds of lawsuits in the coming year.
Chris Casper is a former tech industry product manager who escaped from California for New Mexico. Now he writes about science and tech while searching for the perfect green chile sauce.
