Music industry moves to block KickassTorrents over piracy concerns

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news Members of Australia’s music industry have teamed up to block peer-to-peer file-sharing site KickassTorrents over piracy concerns.

Together, Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) members Universal Music Australia, Warner Music Australia, Sony Music Entertainment Australia and J Albert & Son, along with licencing body APRA AMCOS, have filed an application in the Federal Court seeking orders under section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968 to have the offshore website KickassTorrents and related proxy sites blocked in Australia.

“Online infringement continues to be a major threat to the sustainability of the Australian music industry,” said Jenny Morris, Chair of the APRA Board. “Illegal offshore sites like KickassTorrents show a complete disrespect for music creators and the value of music. Australian music fans already have access – for free if they choose – to the world’s repertoire of music via more than 20 legitimate licensed online music services.”

“Blocking access to sites like KickassTorrents is all about supporting those services and allowing the writers whose songs are available on them to be paid for their work,” Morris added.

According to a statement from the APRA, Section 115A is a “no-fault remedy” allowing copyright owners or their exclusive licensees to apply for injunctions to have ISPs put blocks in place to prevent their customers accessing sites which have the “primary purpose of infringing or facilitating the infringement of copyright”.

The Government has previously indicated that the intended target of these orders should be the “worst of the worst” – those that flagrantly disregard the rights of copyright owners.

“These sites do nothing but exploit the creativity of others and give nothing back to the artists, songwriters, record labels and music publishers whose music is stolen and made available on them, as they make millions of dollars from the advertising which appears on them,” the APRA said.

“These orders will also support legitimate licensed online services which offer music fans access to the music they love across a range of devices at any time and any day,” it concluded.

KickassTorrents is a website providing torrents and magnet links to allow p2p file sharing among users using the BitTorrent protocol. The site claims that it complies with the DMCA and removes copyright-infringing content when it receives complaints from rightsholders.

14 COMMENTS

  1. As I’ve said elsewhere, waste of time and money given the ease to work around the blocks. I get they need to be seen to be trying to protect their products, but surely the money could be spent better.

  2. Overall I see this as a smart move a good long term use of their time / money.

    The current laws & approach won’t work. As mentioned elsewhere it is easy for consumers and the site owner to get around – so the block won’t have an actual impact there. Where it will impact? on the argument for rights holders to request updated more extensive laws – it’s easier to ask for more powers when they can demonstrate (with practical examples) that (a) they are using the current laws available & (b) they aren’t proving effective.

    • It has been shown overseas that site blocking is largely ineffective, especially given how long it takes for these court cases to run, by the time it is finished, the sites to be blocked have already put in place workarounds to make the effort completely useless.

  3. Kick those torrents in the ass
    Kick ass
    Kick ass
    Kick ass
    let’s play torrent football

    You kick
    I kick
    anything not Village Roadshow must be sick

    Kick ass
    Kick ass
    Those pirating tweenies with their torrents
    Kick their ass
    Kick their ass
    They must watch GOT months later
    or my CEO ass is grass

    Kick ass
    Kick ass…

    /s brought to you by Satire Pty Ltd

        • In general, its that easy, simply because you’re asking Google (or whatever public DNS you use – there are dozens) to resolve the address rather than your ISP, or something like that.

          Its so simple to get around the blocks that it makes the blocks pointless.

          • 8.8.8.8 is easy to remember though, and made for a funny (to me at least) response.

            But yeah, plenty out there.

  4. I love that:

    1. Geeks claim this act will be useless and affect few people… yet you will still hear them react negatively to it.

    2. So many people that react negatively to people trying to protect their intellectual property will also be the ones that complain about their rights being affected by “Internet censorship”.

    A whole lot of my rights are more important than your rights – and you would think geeks might understand the concept of intellectual property more than others.

    • I love how some people jump to instant conclusions after a few lines on the internet as well.

      My personal response is about the futility of it, not because of any pro-piracy stance, but because of how easy it is to bypass the repercussions.

      The number of peoples minds it changes has been shown to be insignificant every time they’ve managed to block these sites in the past. Those that want to download will still do so though, and this has been shown to be the wrong way to change that.

      But when I voice that sort of opinion, the instant assumption is that I’m a pirate with a self interest. I use Spotify myself, that does everything I need to do that my original CD’s cant.

      For me, its got nothing to do with WHY they are doing it (which I appreciate), but HOW.

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