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Foxtel names 4 sites in piracy case

Shows such as Wentworth, The Real Housewives of Melbourne & A Place to Call Home have been available on Bit Torrent sites.

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Foxtel has named 4 websites it is seeking to have blocked from access in Australia: The Pirate Bay, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and Torrentz all in its sights.

It claims shows such as Wentworth, The Real Housewives of Melbourne, A Place to Call Home and Open Slather have been available through the sites, directly impacting on its subscription base.

The Federal Court bid to have them blocked from Australian ISPs follows Village Roadshow seeking to stop access to the SolarMovie website.

“I’m actually surprised that Solarmovie has gained so much attention,” site owner told TorrentFreak.

“It’s definitely not the biggest linking site available [SolarMovie is ranked #1,500 by Alexa] and it strictly follows the DMCA at least,” he says.

“No sexual ads are allowed on the site for sure. Furthermore, logged in users don’t see any ads at all.”

“No one I know has heard of Solarmovie. They’ve just had the best free publicity they never hoped for,” chief executive of Internet Australia, Laurie Patton, told Guardian Australia.

“Not only will site-blocking not stop unlawful downloading, it will cause inconvenience to ISPs and additional operating costs that will inevitably be passed on to consumers.”

The first hearings for Village Roadshow and Foxtel’s cases are schedule for March 8 and March 9, respectively.

Source: Cybershack,

12 Responses

    1. The original Isohunt was shut down several years ago but clones popped up within days and eventually new people took over the database and moved the site to another domain, which is still running. When The Pirate Bay was (temporarily) shut down Isohunt were the first to setup an “Old Pirate Bay” site using a copy of TPB database. Neither Iso nor TPB are as popular as they were because their clients have moved elsewhere. The word “Hydra” comes to mind but where is Hercules?

  1. I just want 1 site I can pay an amount a month to stream a good variety of TV shows from. The mess of Netflix, stan, presto etc. makes it such a hassle just to get the content I want. I know competition is good, but at the moment the rights holders can’t compete with the convenience that pirates offer.

    Once this avenue fails to stop people from pirating stuff maybe finally there will be some progress in offering people something that will make piracy a less attractive option for consumers.

  2. Maybe Foxtel should look at reducing its costs and stop ripping consumers off with repeat after repeat! For example, how many times in a week do we see Law and Order shown and the sports channels have reduced the variety of content since rebranding despite what we were told at the time. I think they have to take their share of the blame.

      1. Piracy is much more of a problem for Foxtel than FTA. FTA broadcasts its Australian shows show free for viewing or recording. It has first airing so they can only be pirated after that. Then they post catch-up free for Australians on their websites which they struggle to monetise. The number of people who pirate US shows, who would have watched the show live on TV (i.e. the ads) is very small.

        Even with the reduction in prices you can save $840 a year pirating your favourite Foxtel TV shows and movies. It’s GOT and The Walking Dead that are pirated, not Wanted.

  3. They’re trying to block 4 (ok, big ones) out of literally scores of torrent tracking sites. Pirate Bay has already been “blocked” and moved several times.

    I’ve already commented about the Streisand Effect in relation to SolarMovie.

    At least we now know why the numbers for Open Slather were so low. Because millions* of people were illegally downloading it from Pirate Bay instead of watching Dead Pool.

    *Number picked out of the air by Graham Burke of Village Roadshow

    1. Not sure about anyone else, but I went to Solarmovies to check it out, and found that before I could even look at how to stream a movie the site wanted to steal my information using survey pop-ups

      I am not sure its as big a threat as anyone would lead you to believe (and pretty sure some of the surveys were for companies associated with Village.. sounds like a vested interest from Village if you ask me)

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