There has been a new court order in Australia that targets many sites connected to KickassTorrents. After the main domain of KAT got taken down, copyright holders have started to put their blocking efforts to mirror sites and spinoffs. Twenty Aussie ISPs have only couple of weeks to block a batch of new sites.
Start of the Happenings
A year ago, Australian companies in the music industry got together and submitted the first takedown request Down Under. J Albert & Son, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music teamed up to get KickassTorrents blocked by Aussie ISPs. The main reason for it was claimed to be disrespect towards artists.
The Change by US Authorities
These companies were lucky enough due to the US authorities who took the torrent site down. This made the music industry continue their efforts towards mirror sites and spinoffs. Recently the court order was given to block KAT websites in Australia once and for all. Irony in it is that several websites in the list have nothing to do with KAT and don’t even distribute their content. These sites receive a lot of web traffic though, and copyright holders are keen on blocking anything that offers access to torrent data.
Aussie ISPs Will Have to Block It
ISPs in Australia have only couple of weeks now to block the sites listed up in the court order. Though a lot of people involved have said that this order is unfair, time will show us if the measures even work. As we have seen before, blocking torrent sites have been often unsuccessful and the site owners will work their way out of it.