French film studios demand blocking of illegal streaming sites

Three French organizations representing the movie and TV industry, L’Association des Producteurs de Cinéma, La Fédération Nationale des Distributeurs de Films and Syndicat de l’Edition Vidéo Numérique, filed a lawsuit against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to force the blocking of illegal video streaming sites. The French popular streaming sites are AlloStreaming, AlloShare, AlloMovies and AlloshowTV, where copyright protected content such as movies and TV series are offered, without the copyright holders granted permission.

According to the prosecutors, Google, Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo should remove the aforementioned sites in their search results. Meanwhile, Google however appears to have already removed all references to the sites, following a takedown notice. Furtherore, the organizations requested French Internet Service Providers, such as France Telecom, Orange, to block the access to their subscribers to certain websites.

Earlier this week, A U.S. judge ordered search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing to delist several pages referring to counterfeit Chanel products. Over 700 domain names of websites with counterfeit products were seized.

Perhaps the outcome in the American legal procedure will create a precedent for the French proceedings before the French Court. Proceedings for interim relief will be heard before the High Court on December 15th.  

Reference:TorrentFreak