Last spring, members of the Australian music industry teamed up to file their first ‘pirate’ site blocking request Down Under.
In an application at the Federal Court, member labels Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and J Albert & Son demanded that then leading torrent site KickassTorrents (KAT) should be blocked by the country’s ISPs.
The labels argued that KickassTorrents showed a “complete disrespect for music creators and the value of music,” and wanted Internet users to be prohibited from accessing the site.
However, before the court could decide, KAT was already ‘taken care of‘ by the U.S. Department of Justice, which shut it down.
That didn’t end the blocking effort in Australia though. Instead of going after the main KickassTorrents site, which no longer exists, the labels changed their focus to the various spinoffs that appeared in its wake.
A few days ago the Federal Court issued its judgment, ordering 20 Australian Internet providers to block a variety of domain names.
The new targets, which shifted quite a bit as the case progressed, include Katcr.co, the KAT ‘reincarnation‘ that was launched by a group of former staffers of the original site.
In addition, the order also listed some domains that have absolutely nothing to do with the original KickassTorrents. Kickass.cd, for example, which is little more than a dressed up Pirate Bay mirror.
Justice Burley is nonetheless convinced that the domain names in question deserve to be blocked, relying on the argument that KAT’s primary motive was to infringe or facilitate copyright infringement.
“The large number of monthly visits to the KAT website indicate that the infringement facilitated by the KAT website can be described as flagrant and reflect an open disregard for copyright on the part of the operators of the KAT website,” SMH quotes Justice Burley.
The ISPs in question now have two weeks to implement reasonable measures to block these domains.
Whether this will stop people from infringing is unclear though. A similar Federal Court targeted at The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie was quickly defeated earlier this year.
