Blocking of popular sharing servers in the Czech Republic, court intervention against distribution of illegal content
Sledujteto.cz, eDisk.cz, Datoid.cz and Datoid.sk are servers that have been blacklisted and are now blocked in the Czech Republic due to the court’s preliminary injunction. These servers were popular alternatives to Ulož.to, which users abused to distribute copyrighted content. Similar data servers are often misused to illegally distribute music, movies, series, games and software, which is the main reason for the court’s intervention.
The operators of the affected services informed about the blockage: “Since yesterday, we have been experiencing problems with the loading of our websites www.edisk.cz and www.sledujteto.cz on some Internet providers.” The blockage occurred on the basis of a preliminary injunction issued by the Regional Court in Brno, at the request of the Association of Commercial Television (AKTV), which demanded the removal of illegally shared programmes and series from their production. The members of AKTV are Nova, Prima and Óčko. Czech internet providers are thus obliged to block these servers. According to Novinky.cz’s tests, the O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone networks cannot connect to these servers, and access always ends with an error message.
The blocking does not only affect the eDisk service. “Datoid is facing an absolutely unprecedented attack, with the Regional Court in Brno issuing a preliminary injunction at the request of unnamed TV stations demanding that Datoid be blocked by several operators. The operator of Datoid was not a party to these proceedings and had no opportunity to defend itself,” said Datoid’s representatives.
The operators of these services are trying to circumvent the court’s preliminary injunction. “The services are available on an alternative domain – but we are unable to say whether this will be permanent,” Datoid representatives said. Of course, the court can also block new domains.
Data servers have been under a lot of pressure lately. Last year, an amendment to the Czech Copyright Act came into force, making operators liable for content uploaded by users. In the European Union, a new Digital Services Regulation (DSA) has come into force, setting out rules for digital services acting as intermediaries, including web hosting and online platforms.
Due to the DSA, the operation of Ulož.to Disk, one of the most popular data servers in the Czech Republic, changed significantly late last year. Since December, it has not been possible to easily share files or search among other users’ data. “We have always made sure that the operation of Ulož.to is in compliance with the current legislation. This has been repeatedly confirmed by the courts,” said Jan Karabina, managing director of Cloud Platforms, which operates Ulož.to Disk.
Many users anticipated that these changes would lead to the swift end of Ulož.to Disk, especially because of the ability to terminate membership. Nevertheless, Ulož.to Disk continues to operate after nearly four months.
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