Singapore allows dynamic site blocking in landmark court ruling – Any Web address linking to blocked piracy sites can now be blocked as well

Copyright holders have scored a landmark victory in Singapore with an unprecedented court order allowing any Web address linked to blocked piracy websites to be blocked too.

Last Thursday, the High Court issued the order for “dynamic site blocking” in favour of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

This means Internet service providers (ISPs) Singtel, StarHub, M1, MyRepublic and ViewQwest – which were ordered in May to block 53 piracy websites including The Pirate Bay and Solarmovie.sc – have to also block other Web addresses that point users to the 53 infringing sites when the MPAA asks ISPs for it.

This landmark ruling targets a common method employed by piracy website owners which lets users sidestep blocked content by using alternative Web addresses.

For instance, if xmovies8.com is blocked, new alternatives such as xmovies8.es or xmovies8.nu would pop up to provide access to the same content, rendering the original site blocking ineffective.

In the past, content owners had to make separate applications to the High Court in order to block each alternative Web address. This is no longer necessary, putting Singapore ahead of jurisdictions in Australia and Hong Kong, among others.

“In Singapore, these 53 sites are responsible for a major portion of copyright infringement of films and television shows,” an MPAA spokesman told The Straits Times.

The MPAA’s six member studios are Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal City Studios Production and Warner Bros Entertainment.

The 53 piracy sites, accessed via hundreds of different Web addresses, carry the latest box office hits such as American superhero films Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2, and a host of other movies and TV shows.

Mr Benjamin Ang, president of the Singapore chapter of the non-profit Internet Society, said the masses will find it difficult to access illegal content. Even so, site blocking is not foolproof.

“This can become a game of whack-a-mole, where some consumers and suppliers try different kinds of technical loopholes to overcome the order and get to the blocked content,” he added.

For instance, users can still sidestep blocking by using legitimate virtual private network technologies, available online and commonly used in corporations to secure their Internet access.

A spokesman for the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore said: “We are glad to see rights holders utilising the legal framework that we have put in place to protect their copyright works.”

The original article is published on the The Straits Times, 19 July 2018.