The High Court in Paris, France has reached a decision, which orders Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to block search results from their search engines, which displayed 16 video-streaming sites, including allostreaming, Fifostream and dpstream.Internet service providers such as Orange and Bouygues Telecom are also ordered to block the access of their customers to the sites.
The court found that the video-streaming sites infringed French intellectual property law as they were "almost entirely dedicated" to reproducing works without the permission of their copyright owners.
The case, which took two years to decide, was brought by five groups representing film companies, distributors and producers. Some of the companies-defendants had argued that the French High Court’s order would not be a successful measure against internet copyright violation as users created new sites, which copied the blocked ones and told others about these sites in internet forums.
A representative of one of the claimants, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents six major Hollywood studios, expressed the opinion that although search engines are very useful and highly developed tools, in many cases they facilitate the access of users to illegal-money-making sites.
Although Google expressed disappointment as regards the judgment, it reiterated its devotion to fighting piracy and protecting copy written works with their technology.
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