English Premier League scores against ISPs again
The English Premier League ( PL) has been allowed to extend a blocking order against six UK-based internet service providers (ISPs) for the next football season.
Mr Justice Arnold of the English High Court allowed the extension yesterday, July 18.
The PL is the top tier of the English football league system.
In March 2017, Arnold granted the blocking order against BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media.
The PL had sought an injunction against the ISPs under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. The act enforces article 8(3) of Directive 2001/29/EC, which harmonises aspects of copyright and related rights.
According to the PL, the directive requires the ISPs to ensure that their customers were blocked from accessing streaming services that showed material that infringed the PL’s copyright.
The PL owns the copyright to all of its football matches.
The initial ‘live’ order was in effect only when the PL was broadcasting a live match and it only lasted for a two-month period, until May 22, 2017, in order to assess the blocking order’s effectiveness.
According to the PL, the blocking order was “highly effective” and blocked more than 5,000 internet protocol addresses that had been illegally streaming the PL’s copyright-protected content.
In July 2017, Arnold awarded a second order to cover the next football season, from August 2017 to May 2018.
Then, the PL applied for yet another extension to cover the 2018/2019 football season, which begins next month.
The Football Association, English football’s governing body, filed evidence to support the second order’s effectiveness in blocking access to PL matches.
Arnold said that the second order “was very effective in achieving the blocking of access to the target servers during Premier League matches”.
In addition, Arnold added that no evidence of “over-blocking” was found.
The new order differs from the previous one in two ways. First, it “enlarges the subset of infringing streaming servers to be blocked” and, second, the requirement to notify hosting providers is made subject to a short delay. This is so that the order is not circumvented.
Arnold said that the PL’s evidence in support of the application demonstrated “that there have been attempts to circumvent the second order, and therefore this concern is a very real one”.
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