Record companies successfully applied for an order against various ISPs blocking access to the Pirate Bay website, based on the amended s.40 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. Later in 2013, the record companies successfully applied to the High Court for Kickass Torrents to be blocked.
Record companies had instituted proceedings seeking an order against various ISPs blocking access to the Pirate Bay website. Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) applied to be added as an amicus curiae. The Court refused to add DRI to the case. Considering Irish cases on criteria for joining an amicus curiae, the court found that this case did not involve novel principles and DRI was not a neutral party.
These Regulations amend sections 40 and 205 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 to allow an application for an injunction against an intermediary regarding copyright infringement. They were enacted as a result of the Information Society Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC) and EMI v UPC (2010) (see below).
The plaintiff claimed he had been defamed on the website www.rate-your-solicitor.com. He successfully sought interlocutory orders under s.33 of the Defamation Act 2009 against certain defendants prohibiting publication of the defamatory statements. The court noted that, since the arrival of the internet, judicial hesitation in granting interlocutory orders of this type should be eased. One of the defendants was the host of the website, Dotster, located in the USA. Dotster had not made an appearance in the case and the court made a final order in default of appearance.
The plaintiff had wrongly been identified as the taxi fare evader shown in a video posted on various websites. The judgment primarily concerns the issue of whether the plaintiff could be named on newspaper websites reporting the court case and the court ordered that he could be named. The court noted that it had earlier granted interim orders that social media sites such as YouTube and Google should remove the video and provide the identities of web users who had defamed the plaintiff. The orders regarding identities of web users were granted applying the UK tort case of Norwich Pharmacal v Customs & Excise 1973 UKHL 6. According to media reports, there have been further developments in this case in 2013 and 2014.