Nearly 40% of court order blocks are in error, ORG finds
A new tool added to its blocked.org.uk project examines over 1,000 domains blocked under the UK’s 30 injunctions against over 150 services,
ORG found 37% of those domains are blocked in error, or without any legal basis. The majority of the domains blocked are parked domains, or no longer used by infringing services. One Sci-Hub domain is blocked without an injunction, and a likely trademark infringing site, is also blocked without an injunction.
However, the list of blocked domains is believed to be around 2,500 domains, and is not made public, so ORG are unable to check for all possible mistakes.
Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights Group said:
“It is not acceptable for a legal process to result in nearly 40% maladministration. These results show a great deal of carelessness.
“We expect ISPs and rights holders to examine our results and remove the errors we have found as swiftly as possible.
“We want ISPs to immediately release lists of previously blocked domains, so we can check blocks are being removed by everyone.
“Rights holders must make public exactly what is being blocked, so we can be ascertain how else these extremely wide legal powers are being applied.”
ORG’s conclusions are:
- The administration process of adding and subtracting domains to be blocked is very poor
- Keeping the lists secret makes it impossible to check errors
- Getting mistakes corrected is opaque. The ISP pages suggest you go to court.
Examples
Full results and statistical breakdowns
https://www.blocked.org.uk/legal-blocks/errors
Export full results
https://www.blocked.org.uk/legal-blocks
For a list of UK injunctions, see:
The UK has 30 copyright and trademark injunctions, blocking over 150 websites.