Twentieth Century Fox v Sky, High Court
The High Court has granted an injunction in favour of the applicant members of the Motion Picture Association of America and owners of copyright in films and television programmes, by ordering the defendant Internet service providers to block nine websites, five of which were “Popcorn Time” websites. The ISPs did not contest the application, and the claimants had hoped that it would be a simple case, just like other recent ones on this issue. However, the difficulty came here as it was the first time a case had involved Popcorn Time websites, so a hearing was needed.
Popcorn Time websites enable users to browse, search and locate content and other features, including enabling the user to watch the films and programmes more quickly as a stream without having to wait for the download. The content available using the Popcorn Time website is updated constantly as they link to a site that provides update information. The infringing material does not actually come from the Popcorn Time website itself, though.
The Court said BitTorrent websites and streaming sites infringed copyright by communicating works to the public even though the infringing copies did not come from those sites themselves, because the websites contained catalogued and indexed connections to the sources of the copies. That did not happen here. With the Popcorn Time websites, the application ran on the user’s computer, which gave a catalogue and indexed connection to the sources of the copies. The defendant sites here did not communicate any copyright works, but they made available a tool – the Popcorn Time application. They were facilitating the making available of content using the tool.
The Court decided that the operators of the Popcorn Time websites had not authorised the copyright infringement. However, the judge did grant judgment to the claimants as the Popcorn Time websites were jointly liable with operators of the host websites. The suppliers of Popcorn Time knew and intended their application to procure and induce the user to access the host websites and thus infringe copyright. They provided the software and information to keep indexes up-to-date. Popcorn Time website suppliers had a common design with the host website operators to provide works to the public by infringing copyright.