Search icon

News

07th Feb 2017

Hollywood takes legal action to stop 1.3m Irish illegal downloaders

Katie Mythen-Lynch

Some of the world’s biggest TV and film studios have joined forces to halt the illegal streaming of their shows in Ireland.

Six members of the Motion Picture Association have launched a legal action demanding that Irish courts order internet service providers (ISPs) to block websites where visitors can search, download, share and stream their content online and via android boxes, although individual customers are not being targeted.

The studios behind the legal action in the Commercial Court include Universal Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Columbia, Warner Bros Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television.

ISPs include Vodafone, Sky Ireland, Magnet, Eurcom and Digiweb are being asked to immediately shut down their customer’s access to three websites, named as movie4k.to, primewire.ag and onwatchseries.to.

According to the Irish Times, the court was told that as many as 1.3 million people in Ireland are accessing television programmes and films illegally through streaming websites, resulting in millions of euro in lost revenues annually.