Submission + - Legitimate sites blocked in UK court-ordered piracy clampdown (bbc.co.uk)
timbo234 writes: BBC News reports that an unknown number of legitimate websites, including well-known radio and TV magazine radiotimes.com, have been caught up in a High-Court ordered block against First Row Sports, "which offers unauthorised streams of football games". According to the High-Court "ISPs are wholly reliant on the rights-holders accurately identifying which IPs should be blocked".
For the time-being some of the major ISPs (with the exception of Talk Talk) have unblocked First Row Sports so that the legitimate websites caught up in the block are available again. However this isn't good enough for the Premier League, the rights-holder who ordered the blocking, who insist that they alone get to decide when or how the legitimate sites are freed from the blocking: "the court order that requires internet service providers to block this website clearly states that any issues they have in implementing the block must be raised with the Premier League before taking any further action".
Is it really a good system that owners of blocked legitimate sites should have to beg so-called 'rights-holders', who may themselves have little technical skill or understanding of how the Internet works, to be freed from their unfair blocking? Surely the implementation of these blocks (leaving aside the argument over whether they should be allowed at all) is best left to ISPs who have the technical knowledge to get it right?
For the time-being some of the major ISPs (with the exception of Talk Talk) have unblocked First Row Sports so that the legitimate websites caught up in the block are available again. However this isn't good enough for the Premier League, the rights-holder who ordered the blocking, who insist that they alone get to decide when or how the legitimate sites are freed from the blocking: "the court order that requires internet service providers to block this website clearly states that any issues they have in implementing the block must be raised with the Premier League before taking any further action".
Is it really a good system that owners of blocked legitimate sites should have to beg so-called 'rights-holders', who may themselves have little technical skill or understanding of how the Internet works, to be freed from their unfair blocking? Surely the implementation of these blocks (leaving aside the argument over whether they should be allowed at all) is best left to ISPs who have the technical knowledge to get it right?