EZTV, a popular sites accused of aiding piracy, is to be blocked by the UK’s biggest ISPs.
While details of a High Court order obtained last week have not yet been made public, it’s expected that BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and EE will block access.
Last month we heard that the Motion Picture Association (MPA) had both EZTV and YIFY-Torrents in its firing line.
Read Recombu Digital’s report on UK ISPs blocking file sharingSources tell us that EZTV will be blocked before the end of the week but so far we’ve heard nothing about YIFY-Torrents being blocked.
Sky typically doesn’t comment on these stories but instead keeps a refreshed online list of all the sites it’s been asked to block. Bodies on the slab so far include The Pirate Bay, H33T, Fenopy, Kick Ass Torrents, Movie2k and Download4All. So far there’s no mention of EZTV or YIFY.
TorrentFreak reports that the court order obtained by the MPA and Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) covers both sites, which means that ISPs will have to block both sites by a certain date. Normally these court orders require an ISP to block a site within 14 days of receiving the letter.
Apparently, FACT wanted the UK’s broadband giants to block access to these sites ahead of order but none of the big five were willing to do so. ISPs normally demand a court order before taking any action.
Update: We’ve been contacted by MPA spokespeople who have told us that the court order sent out to UK ISPs only applies to EZTV.
A Motion Picture Association spokesperson said: “FACT and The Motion Picture Association (MPA) wrote to EZTV asking it to stop infringing creative content. This site provides access to copyrighted material on a massive scale with no permission from the copyright owners. FACT, supported by the MPA, is now taking further action against EZTV through the courts and we have notified the major UK ISPs of our intention to act.”
The MPA would not comment on YIFI-Torrents or any future court orders. We’ve updated our headline to reflect this.
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