Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Others v Sky UK Ltd and Others
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Birss |
| Judgment Date | 28 April 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 1082 (Ch) |
| Date | 28 April 2015 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: HC2014 - 002029 |
[2015] EWHC 1082 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice, Rolls Building
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL
Mr Justice Birss
Case No: HC2014 - 002029
Richard Spearman QC (instructed by Wiggin LLP) for the Claimants
The defendants did not appear and were not represented
Hearing dates: 24th March 2015
The claimants are all members of the Motion Picture Association of America and hold copyright in a large number of films and television programmes. This is an application by those companies for an order under s97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. These orders are conventionally known as website blocking orders. The defendants are the major internet service providers in the UK ("ISPs"). In this case the ISPs do not oppose the orders sought by the claimants.
The proceedings were commenced as a Part 7 claim issued on 23 rd December 2014 seeking the s97A order. On the same day the claimants issued an application notice to bring the application before the court. In cases of this kind once the order under s97A is made (assuming that is appropriate) the proceedings are effectively finished.
The jurisdiction to grant such orders and the considerations which arise relating to them have been dealt with in a series of judgments in the last four years. Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the recent judgment of Arnold J in Cartier v BSkyB [2014] EWHC 3354 (Ch) summarises the position as follows:
3. Over the last three years, a series of orders have been made requiring the ISPs to block, or at least impede, access to websites pursuant to section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ("the 1988 Act"), which implements Article 8(3) of European Parliament and Council Directive 2001/29/EC of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society ("the Information Society Directive"). I have considered the principles to be applied to applications of that kind in a series of judgments: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp v British Telecommunications plchttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2011/1981.html [2011] EWHC 1981 (Ch), http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?path=/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2011/1981.html [2012] Bus LR 1471 (" 20C Fox v BT"); Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp v British Telecommunications plc (No 2)http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2011/2714.html [2011] EWHC 2714 (Ch), http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?path=/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2011/2714.html [2012] Bus LR 1525 (" 20C Fox v BT (No 2)"); Dramatico Entertainment Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltdhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2012/268.html [2012] EWHC 268 (Ch), http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?path=/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2012/268.html [2012] 3 CMLR 14 (" Dramatico v Sky"); Dramatico Entertainment Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd (No 2)http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2012/1152.html [2012] EWHC 1152 (Ch), http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?path=/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2012/1152.html [2012] 3 CMLR 15 (" Dramatico v Sky (No 2)"); EMI Records Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltdhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2013/379.html [2013] EWHC 379 (Ch), [2013] ECDR 8(" EMI v Sky"); Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltdhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2013/2058.html [2013] EWHC 2058 (Ch), [2013] ECDR 14 (" FAPL v Sky"); and Paramount Home Entertainment International Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltdhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2013/3479.html [2013] EWHC 3479 (Ch), [2014] ECDR 7 (" Paramount v Sky"). Since the last of those judgments, Henderson J has considered the impact of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-466/12Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB [ http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/EUECJ/ 2014/C46612.htmlEU: C:2014:76] in Paramount Home Entertainment International Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Ltdhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/ Ch/2014/937.html [2014] EWHC 937 (Ch) (" Paramount v Sky 2").
4. It is convenient to note at this stage three points about the cases under section 97A. The first is that neither the ISPs nor the rightholders have appealed against any aspect of the orders made in those cases, including those aspects which deal with the costs of the applications and the costs of implementing the orders. The second is that, since 20C Fox v BT and 20C Fox v BT (No 2), the ISPs have not opposed the making of the orders sought by the rightholders, but have restricted themselves to negotiating the wording of the orders if the Court is minded to grant them. Thirdly, in consequence, most of the orders have been granted after consideration of the applications on paper.
All of the decisions referred to have been judgments of the High Court. I gather that Cartier itself will come before the Court of Appeal but since Cartier is not a copyright case it is not directly concerned with s97A. The issue there is whether a similar order should be made to prevent trade mark infringement.
Now that the essential principles relating to s97A website blocking orders have been sorted out most of the orders have been granted on paper (see Cartier paragraph 4 above). Nevertheless this application is an illustration of the potential problems which can arise by taking that approach, as I shall explain.
It is a matter for the applicant to decide whether to ask to have an application heard on paper or not. There is a box to tick at part 5 on form N244. Two things are worth emphasising nevertheless. First, it is a matter for the court whether to deal with an application this way (see CPR Part 23 r 23.8). Second, on one view the application, although it has been brought by an application notice under Part 23, is in effect the disposal of the action. If the order is granted the action has come to an end. The general rule is that trials are to be in public ( CPR Part 39 r39.2 (note that r39.1 provides that r39.2 refers to trials)). None of the limited exceptions in r39.2(3) apply here.
The previous applications on paper under Part 23 have come before various judges in this Division. To my knowledge all of the applications which have been dealt with on paper are ones in which the factual circumstances are the same as the cases which have been considered in reasoned public judgments and are ones in which the order is unopposed in that the ISPs do not oppose either the order itself or the fact the application is on paper. Moreover no-one else has come forward to oppose the order either. In those circumstances one can see why the court would not consider that a hearing was necessary (CPR r23.8(c)).
Another pragmatic aspect of some of the previous applications is that multiple different and independent websites are dealt with at the same time. When the issues raised are the same for each website, again it clearly makes sense, and is in accordance with the overriding objective to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost (CPR r1.1) to group them together in this way.
This application came before me originally as a paper application. It sought an order under s97A in relation to nine different websites with the objective of restraining very large scale copyright infringement in films and television programmes. The target websites (as defined in the original skeleton argument) are:
i) afdah. com ("Afdah")
ii) watchonlineseries.eu ("Watch Online Series")
iii) g2g.fm ("G2G")
iv) axxomovies.org ("Axxo Movies")
v) popcorntime.io ("Popcorn Time IO")
vi) flixtor.me ("Flixtor")
vii) moviepanda.tv ("Movie Panda")
viii) popcorn-time.se ("Popcorn Time SE")
ix) isoplex.isohunt.to ("Isoplex").
The application was supported by detailed evidence running to six lever arch files with statements from Simon Baggs, Eloise Preston and Mahboad Moeiri-Farsi of Wiggin and Bret Boivin of Incopro as well as an expert's report of Dr Martino Barenco. Mr Baggs' evidence was the main factual evidence relied on and deals with the claimants' rights and the various target websites. The evidence of Ms Preston, Mr Moeiri-Farsi and Mr Boivin addresses the availability of the claimants' copyright works on the target sites and how they intervene in making the infringing content available. Dr Barenco explains the statistical analysis which has been undertaken to ascertain the proportion of copyright protected content made available by the target websites. The claimants' junior counsel also provided a full skeleton argument.
The target websites the subject of this application divide into three types depending on how the content is provided to users. Two types are streaming sites and BitTorrent sites. Streaming sites are sites which work in a broadly similar way to the websites discussed in FAPL v Sky [2013] EWHC 2058 (Ch) at paragraph 14–19 and Paramount v Sky [2013] EWHC 3479 (Ch). BitTorrent sites are sites which use the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing protocol and work in the manner discussed in the Pirate Bay cases Dramatico v Sky [2012] EWHC 268 (Ch) and Dramatico v Sky No 2 [2012] EWHC 1152 (Ch). Website blocking applications give rise to various questions and the answers to those questions...
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