High Court applies copyright law's website blocking rules to 'Popcorn Time' application providers

The High Court ordered BT, Sky, Virgin, TalkTalk and EE to block their customers' access to the sites after six major film studios, including Twentieth Century Fox and Disney, claimed the sites infringe their copyright. The ISPs did not oppose the orders that the film studios requested.

Mr Justice Birss granted the blocking orders despite finding that the operators of the sites on which the 'Popcorn Time' applications could be downloaded were not liable for unauthorised communication of copyright works to the public or of authorising a copyright infringing act.

The judge, however, said that the operators of the sites were "jointly liable for the infringements committed" by the operators of other sites on which unlawful copies of films were hosted and which could be accessed by users of the Popcorn Time applications.

It was justified to apply the website blocking provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) to the operators of the sites that made those applications available, he ruled.

Under section 97A (s97A) of the CDPA, the UK courts have the power to grant an injunction against an ISP if it had 'actual knowledge' that someone had used its service to infringe copyright.

"The point of Popcorn Time is to infringe copyright," Mr Justice Birss said. "The Popcorn Time application has no legitimate purpose. It is a proper use of the court's power under s97A both to seek to prevent its dissemination and to seek to interfere with its operation. I will make [website blocking] orders accordingly."

It is the first time that the High Court has assessed whether the section 97A provisions of the CDPA can be applied to providers of Popcorn Time applications.

Those applications enable online content to be accessed in a different way from other technologies, such as the peer-to-peer file sharing BitTorrent protocol, which the UK courts have previously assessed when rights holders have asked them to enforce copyright law.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Birss explained that Popcorn Time applications can be downloaded for free from the internet and allows users to "browse, search and locate films and television programmes that they wish to view" without having to revisit the "Popcorn Time application source website" from which they downloaded the tool.

To view content, users just have to run the Popcorn Time application on their computer and select from a "constantly updated" list of content being pulled in from other websites that host the content, he said.

"Once a work has been selected the application downloads the content using the BitTorrent protocol," Mr Justice Birss said. "The user does not need to download or install BitTorrent client software separately. As a BitTorrent client the application identifies peers over the internet from which it can obtain the desired content. It communicates via the BitTorrent protocol. With BitTorrent, a file of content such as a film is broken up into numerous small pieces, held on peers' computers anywhere in the world. To download a file the BitTorrent client software collects the pieces together and assembles them into a content file for viewing."

The judge said that users of Popcorn Time applications can view content "as a stream" rather than having to wait for it to download onto their computer first before they can watch it. However, he said it is possible for users to download a permanent copy of the content file. Mr Justice Birss said that it "appears" that users of Popcorn Time applications can circumvent blocks placed on websites by ISPs to access content on that site.

"Popcorn Time applications locate torrents by searching catalogues of existing websites which host those torrents," the judge said. "In some cases the source site is not blocked under an existing s97A order but in other cases the site is blocked. When a blocked site is used as a source, it appears that the block is circumvented, probably by the Popcorn Time application using a proxy server or by encryption."

The blocking orders which Mr Justice Birss granted will be aimed at preventing users from downloading the Popcorn Time application and also look to "interfere with the operation of Popcorn Time applications already downloaded", the judge said.