Court orders internet providers to block file sharing website

After 12 of the largest record companies in Israel had forwarded a petition, the Haifa District Court ruled two weeks ago that the three largest internet service providers in Israel prevent access to the Israeli file-sharing site httpshare.

Court considers site illicit

Surprisingly enough, the site in question, httpshare, doesn’t hold any actual films or music files available for potential downloaders, it just has links to genuine file sharing sites, such as bittorent. Users came to notice that over the last few days they were prompted with a 404 error message from their internet browser when trying to visit the site, however, no notice of the site’s blocking was shown on the site.

Ynetnews.com quotes the Haifa District Court Justice Gideon Ginat in his February 25th verdict “I order the respondents, that is Israeli internet service providers, to systematically block access to the illicit site, httpshare, so that surfers cannot enter this site and utilize it in order to impede upon the claimants’ copy rights.”

So far the judge did not establish any timeframe for the aforementioned shut down, nor did he specify a certain period of time for this interdiction.

Site operators claim foul-play

The riposte came at once - site operators expressed their discontent with the decision and apparently tried to change the IP address of their website, without being however able to rid themselves of the blocking internet service providers have imposed.

The site’s homepage shows the following message “The file sharing battle has begun…we’ll be left with a world wide web that contains news alone.”

Httpshare - and the fight is on

As the site operator fairly claims – there are no legal grounds to account for the site’s banning. As the Netherlands laws states, sites which only offer external links to other sites which allow users to download movies, music, games and applications are within the boundaries of legality.

The site operator goes on arguing - “The website operates from the Netherlands, and the fact that is in Hebrew does not make it automatically subject to Israeli law! Israeli law applies only to Israeli residents and to websites operating from Israel itself.”

IFPI is determined to target international sites as well

We get further information from Moti Amitai, Director of the Enforcement Unit of the Israeli branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, who states that the IFPI has put on trial sites which operate from Israel and which are owned by Israeli.

Amitai went on to specify that in what regards the international files sharing sites the recent verdict will be used as a precedent to help also bring to court international sites.