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French web-block injunction targets search engines

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 3 December 2013

Web block injunctions are becoming common place in Europe, with the music and movie industries in various countries going to court to get orders forcing internet service providers to block access to copyright infringing websites where jurisdiction issues prevent the authorities from actually stopping piracy set ups from operating.

But a new injunction in France goes one step further by also forcing search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo! to remove the offending websites from their databases. This is a step towards tackling the ongoing issue with the web-block approach to combating online piracy, ie that post any block, proxy sites soon appear which are easily found via search engines, and which provide easy access to blocked file-sharing sites.

The search engines, of course, will remove specific links to infringing content if made aware of them under the takedown system set out in American copyright law, but so far Google et al have resisted calls by the music and film industries, who routinely argue “why can’t you just automatically block any link that begins with the domain of a known copyright infringing site like thepiratebay.se?”

A new web block injunction passed by the High Court in Paris, which names search engines as well as ISPs, seems to force the search firms to take that kind of action, with sixteen unlicensed video-streaming sites targeted. Though, of course, the injunction won’t specifically mention the proxy URLs that will now spring up for the targeted sites, which is another weakness; though a recent Belgian injunction against The Pirate Bay allowed for proxies to be added to the block list without renewed court action, and the UK web-block rulings have some flexibility in this regard to.

But reps for the web firms in the French case nevertheless argued that the web-block injunctions were unworkable because of the constant stream of new proxies that are likely to be created every time one route to unlicensed content is cut off. Following the ruling, Google said it was disappointed with the court’s verdict, and that rights owners should be utilising its rights management tools rather then pursuing web block injunctions of this kind.

But the UK’s Motion Picture Association welcomed the decision, telling reporters: “Search engines are incredibly skilful, yet they are still leading consumers to illegal money-making sites even when the searcher is seeking legal content online. The present situation is confusing for consumers, damaging the legal download market and legitimising copyright theft. The decision in France is clearly a step in [the right] direction”.

In related news, the Irish record industry has just secured a web-block injunction against Kickass Torrents, having won a similar order against The Pirate Bay back in June.