Pirate site blocking is a reasonable way for rightsholders to protect their rights in a highly targeted fashion. Importantly, external supervision isn’t needed because everyone knows what they’re doing. In a twist no one saw coming, Austrian ISPs are currently blocking Cloudflare after a rightsholder obtained a court order to render pirate sites inaccessible and included the CDN’s IP addresses.

In common with many countries in Europe, Austria couldn’t escape pressure from rightsholders to implement site blocking to prevent piracy.

Local ISPs didn’t like the idea but following a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2014, rightsholders took legal action to have sites blocked. ISPs fought all the way to the Supreme Court, but to no avail. Concerns over net neutrality were also brushed aside.

Movie companies went on to target several major streaming sites and then in 2015, The Pirate Bay, 1337x and other torrent sites were blocked following action by music industry group IFPI.

The rest of this article can be read on TorrentFreak.com

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