The South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT) has successfully lobbied the Department of Communications (DoC) to issue a policy directive to block BitTorrent protocols and access to all popular torrent tracking websites in South Africa.
SAFACT argued that BitTorrent – a protocol used for peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet – is responsible for most online piracy in South Africa.
According to SAFACT blocking BitTorrent services will assist to protect copyrighted material like movies, TV series and software in South Africa.
The DoC concurred with SAFACT, and issued its “Anti Online Piracy policy directive”, published in Government Gazette No. 130401, instructing the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to draft regulation to fight copyright infringement on the Internet.
The DoC stated that this policy directive is needed to “to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of South African and International digital material”.
According to the policy directive the regulations should force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to all BitTorrent services as well as websites which ‘facilitate copyright infringement’.
The new regulations will block any website or Internet service (protocol) which is “committing or facilitating copyright violations punishable under section 27 of the South African Copyright Act of 1978”.
Internet Service Providers shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers in South Africa to websites and Internet services which facilitate or assist in copyright infringement.
The policy directive added that ISPs will have to implement measures designed to prevent the domain name of the infringing site from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address.
The responsibility to inform Internet users about the blocked websites and services will be up to ISPs.
An entity taking an action described in this policy directive shall determine the means to communicate such action to the entity’s users or customers
More information about the policy directive and which websites and services will be blocked can be found on the Anti-Online Piracy Policy Directive homepage.
SAFACT Anti-BitTorrent poster
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