A federal judge All Internet service providers in the United States have been ordered to block three pirate streaming services operated by DoD defendants who have never appeared in court and are hiding under false identities.
Blocking orders affect Israel.tv, Israeli-tv.com, and Sdarot.tv, as well as related domains listed in the rules, and any other domain where copyright-infringing websites may re-emerge in the future. The three essentially unanimous judgments (see here, here and here) issued April 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Each ruling provides a list of 96 ISPs expected to block websites, including Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. But the rulings say all ISPs must comply, even if they are not on the list:
It is further ordered that all ISPs (without limitation referred to in Exhibit B here) and any other ISP providing service in the United States today will block access to the Website at any domain address known today (including but not restricted to Exhibit B) at Exhibit here or In the future any technical means available to the ISP system will be used by the defendants (“newly identified websites”). Domain addresses and newly identified websites will be channeled in such a way that users will be unable to connect and / or use the website, and ISP's DNS servers will be diverted to a landing page managed and controlled by plaintiffs (“landing page”).
That landing page is available here and cites U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk-Filer as an “order to block all access to this website / service due to copyright infringement.”
“If you are in any way affected by the court's decision, you can file a motion in federal court in the Southern District of New York in the above case,” the landing page said.
“It's too long to hide.”
Three lawsuits were filed by Israeli TV and film producers and providers against Doe who run the websites. Each of the three judgments was awarded 7.65 million in damages. TorrentFreak pointed to the verdicts in an article on Monday.
The orders also include permanent sanctions against the defendants themselves and other types of companies that have served or may serve the defendants. These include companies such as Cloudflare, Godaddy, Google and Namechip.
In all three cases, the judge ruled that none of the defendants had responded to the allegations or appeared in court. “The defendants have made numerous attempts to hide themselves and the plaintiffs from the acquisition of this money and to identify this court, including the use of multiple false identities and addresses in connection with their activities and intentionally using fraudulent contact information for infringing websites,” the judgment said. .
Defendants are responsible for copyright infringement and violations of the disciplinary provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the judge wrote, describing the infringement as follows:
Through the website, the defendants are republishing and streaming the plaintiff's original content, broadcast channels and TV services that are only allowed to broadcast and / or watch in the territory of the State of Israel and under a license. The infringing broadcast includes original content produced and owned by the plaintiffs, mostly in Hebrew, and also from major studios in the United States and elsewhere, licensed to the plaintiffs exclusively for broadcasting in Israel (excluding explicit licenses for broadcasting in the United States).
Rulings are more target web hosts and banks
The plaintiffs are United King Film Distribution, DBS Satellite Services (1998), Hot Communications Systems, Reset Media and Cassette Broadcasting. When plaintiffs “submit their programming in an encrypted form,” the defendants “allow consumers of various services and hardware end-users to bypass plaintiff's encryption to view the plaintiff's content,” the ruling said.
The judge directed the domain registrar and registrars to transfer the domain name to the plaintiffs. The judgments include sanctions against “third parties providing services used in the conduct of defendants”, including web hosts, content distribution networks, DNS providers, VPN providers, web designers, search-based online advertising services and others.
Financial institutions face similar restrictions when it comes to doing business with blocked websites The judgments refer directly to the defendants' financial accounts, stating that the plaintiffs will have “continued authority to serve this order on any party controlling or otherwise holding such accounts” unless they recover the full amount owed by the defendants under the “order”. “This generally applies to PayPal, banks and payment providers.
This story originally appeared Ars Technica.
