Aussie Blocking Juggernaut Continues With 105 More ‘Pirate’ Domains

Last December, Australia’s Federal Court issued an injunction in favor of Village Roadshow, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia, Universal, and Warner, requiring local ISPs to block 181 pirate domains linked to 78 sites.

Soon after, the same companies (plus Australian distributor Madman and Tokyo Broadcasting) returned to court with a new application to block 79 “online locations” associated with 99 domains.

In common with previous blocking applications, local ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, Vodafone, plus their subsidiaries, were asked to prevent access to the platforms, stated as all being located overseas. In all, 52 Internet service providers were listed in the application.

This week, more than six months after the original documents were filed, Justice Nicholas in the Federal Court granted an order under Section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968 in favor of the studios.

The order appears to have changed slightly since the original application. It now lists 104 domains spread across 76 allegedly-infringing platforms. Many of the sites are well-known torrent and streaming services, including StreamCR, Torrenting, TorrentLeech, AnimeHeaven, and HorribleSubs, to name just a few.

It’s extremely unusual for any sites to mount any kind of defense against blocking but earlier this year, Socrates Dimitriadis – the operator of Greek-Movies.com – did just that.

“My site is just a search engine that refers users to third-party websites,” he explained in a letter to the Court.

That appears to have held no sway with the Judge. Greek-Movies is the 15th site listed in the injunction, with ISPs required to target its main domain (greek-movies.com) and/or its IP address 136.243.50.75, using DNS, IP address or URL blocking, or “any alternative technical means”.

A copy of the injunction can be downloaded here (pdf)

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