Judge gives media company far-reaching powers in the fight against pirate sites

A US judge has given a Philippine media company the powers through a court order to force hosters to take down a number of pirate sites. Domain names have also been seized and the company has even gained access to Google Webmaster Tools.

The Philippine ABS-CBN filed a complaint in federal court in Oregon against 12 websites that allegedly contain illegal streaming content. These include the sites Pinoystreaming.com, Pinoytvko.biz and Pinoy-tube.com. ABS-CBN asked the judge to take prompt action without notifying the owners of the sites, because the company feared the sites would soon resurface under a different domain name.

The judge agreed to this request and gave the prosecutor even more powers, according to the order that Torrentfreak discovered. Not only did ABS-CBN have the right to force a number of hosting companies to take down the websites via a so-called ex-parte injunction, the domain names were also seized and search engines such as Google were ordered to remove the relevant sites from the search results. filter.

The court even gave ABS-CBN the right to demand access to the owners’ Google Webmaster Tools account. This should prevent site owners from doing redirects after taking down their websites. The domains concerned now route to a legal text. In addition, bank balances have been frozen.

The far-reaching and broadly worded court order that was issued before the defendants were able to defend themselves is met with resistance in the US. Civil rights movement EFF calls the verdict ‘worrying’ because the judge allegedly did not look sufficiently into the case and disadvantaged the defendants by not offering them a chance to reply. It is still unknown whether the owners of the alleged pirate sites will let it come to a lawsuit. The injunction has little impact on future lawsuits, as an ex-parte injunction was not made on the basis of a full trial after hearing both parties.