Germany’s Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI) welcomes the first-instance decision of the Regional Court of Munich in the legal dispute between several record companies and Telekom Deutschland GmbH. Last Friday, the Regional Court of Munich ruled that Telekom, which as an Internet service provider grants access to websites that structurally infringe copyright, such as goldesel.to, has to block the access to those websites via DNS blocking. For the first time this has been decided in a main proceeding. The ruling is in line with the current case law of the Higher Regional Court of Munich, according to which Vodafone has to block access to the illegal kinox.to website.  
 
Structurally infringing websites generally do not have an imprint or a serviceable address. Operators offering infringing content do this in order to generate high Internet traffic and advertising revenues through the placement of advertising banners, etc.  
 
René Houareau, Managing Director Law & Politics at BVMI: "Action against infringements in the digital space can only be successful if various effective measures are combined. Blocking access to infringing websites is an important element in containing such infringements - especially when other measures reach their limits. It is very gratifying that the opportunity has been seized here to create more legal certainty for right holders. Incidentally, this is also in the interests of consumers, who are misled by such offers. In many other countries the method of blocking access to structurally illegal sites is already being used successfully in many cases".