The trade organisation that represents book, journal and electronic publishers in the United Kingdom – The Publishers Association (PA) – has been given permission to block copyrighted works from being displayed on download websites.
Following an application made under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the PA was successful in obtaining permission from the High Court to block seven websites found to offer material that infringed on copyright.
The targeted sites – AvaxHome, Bookfi, Bookre, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwrap and LibGen – are all based overseas and made copyrighted material available for public download, with reports stating that 80 to 90 per cent of content was pirated.
Through advertising deals, the sites became very profitable businesses, but none of their income was given to the authors and publishing houses responsible for their success.
The UK’s main internet providers (BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk and EE) have been given ten days in which to block customer access to the sites, though Freebookspot has claimed to have removed any copyrighted content.
Google has also been asked to help the PA by removing 1.75 million URLs linking to the offending websites.
Richard Mollet, chief executive of the PA, said: “A third of publisher revenues now come from digital sales but unfortunately this rise in the digital market has brought with it a growth in online infringement.
“Our members need to be able to protect their authors’ works from such illegal activity; writers need to be paid and publishers need to be able to continue to innovate and invest in new talent and material.
“We are very pleased that the High Court has granted this order and, in doing so, recognises the damage being inflicted on UK publishers and authors by these infringing websites.”