A French court has ordered ISPs to block veteran file-hosting/streaming platform Uptobox. French internet users made roughly 10 million visits to Uptobox last month and are unlikely to give up easily. Meanwhile, blundering efforts to block other content led to the entire Telegram platform being blocked in France last weekend. French visitors were diverted to a government website where code linked their visit to serious crime.

Orders for ISPs to block sites on copyright infringement grounds used to be rare and controversial. Any imposition of ‘internet police’ duties angered ISPs; blocking wouldn’t end with pirate sites, some warned.

The launch of regulator ARCOM in early 2022 allowed France to block pirate sites on an industrial scale, and it wasted no time in doing so. Self-reported results hailed site-blocking measures as extremely effective and therefore totally justified.

ISPs now partner with rightsholders to ensure blocking goes smoothly, meaning the friction and fears of the past remain there. We’re informed that ISPs blocked 1,299 domain names under this system in 2022 but in common with the websites themselves, their names aren’t for public consumption.

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

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