There are hundreds of VPN (virtual private network) providers offering services that trick websites into thinking a computer is not located in Ireland but is in a country where ThePirateBay, for example, is not blocked.

By 2013, all other Irish ISPs were given 30 days to follow suit by also blocking access to ThePirateBay but hundreds of other similar torrenting sites popped up in its place with new ones emerging each time another was blocked.Įven so, it is relatively easy for savvy internet users to find a way around accessing these blocked sites while their activity remains (for the most part) undetected. In 2010, a “three-strikes” rule was introduced by Eircom whereby alleged copyright infringers were sent a warning notice, with a seven-day disconnection following the third notice. The second wave reached Ireland in 2009 when Eircom agreed to block torrenting site ThePirateBay, where users had free access to hundreds of thousands of movies, TV shows and music albums, all available to download in chunks or “torrents” hosted on computers around the world. In 2001, the first wave of worldwide, court-backed crackdowns on internet piracy came when music-sharing site Napster shut down after being sued by Metallica, Dr Dre and the Recording Industry Association of America. Over 1m viewers could have access cut over illegal streaming.Online content: Studios’ battle with streaming services heats up.Do you download illegally? Are you morally okay with that?.The former is illegal and the latter is, well, complicated. There is a big difference between downloading files that are then stored on your hard drive and streaming online content. Given the number of Irish visitors, it is safe to assume there are some nervous internet users out there wondering if what they are doing is illegal and if they will be caught. It wants to block access to these sites within Ireland because they provide links to other websites hosting copyright-infringing content, a substantial portion of which are movies and television shows made by these six studios. MPA told the court that WatchSeries attracted almost two million visitors from Ireland in October 2016, Primewire received 1.26 million Irish visitors and Movie4k had 200,000 visitors. Monday’s Commercial Court case was taken by the Motion Picture Association (representing Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros) against Irish internet service providers (ISPs) concerning websites Movie4k.to, and Onwatchseries.to. After court action taken by a group of film studios to have three movie streaming portals blocked, the cat-and-mouse game of internet piracy endures as technology continues to outpace copyright law.

Penalty for watching pirated movies