James Delahunty
13 Aug 2009 12:04
After receiving take-down notices from the Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA) requesting that two International websites be blocked, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has decided not to comply. Specifically, the RISA had requested the blocking of Soundike.com and GoMusicNow.ur, because the services sell tracks for as low as $0.09 each.
The local Nokia Music Store charges easily ten times the amount for song and album downloads. The ISPA responded to the take-down notices on behalf of its members, rejecting the request and maintaining that it is not up to the ISPA what sites should be blocked.
"It isn't up to ISPA to decide whether or not websites should be blocked. It is up to ISPA to assist and advise its members in dealing with take-down notices made in terms of the ECT Act," said ISPA GM Ant Brooks.
"The take-down notices ISPA's members received from RiSA were requests to block access to certain Internet sites hosted outside of South Africa. The take-down notice process in the ECT Act can only be used to request the removal of content hosted on the network of the service provider to whom that take-down notice is sent."
Brooks continued: "It cannot be used to request that an ISP blocks access to content hosted on another network somewhere. For this reason, ISPA advised its members that the RiSA notices were invalid and wrote to RiSA rejecting them."