The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines has made its first-ever request to block websites, targeting 11 domains and subdomains linked to the torrent site YTS.
The flagged sites are as follows:
- torrents.yts.rs
- yts.ag
- yts.am
- yts.dirproxy.com
- yts.do
- yts.lt
- yts.mx
- yts.rs
- yts.unblocked.love
- ytssss.jamsbase.com
- ytsuproxy.to
Nathanial S. Arevalo, the deputy director general of the IPOPHL, signed the site-blocking request on May 3, 2024, after the IP Rights Enforcement Office of the aforementioned government agency found that these sites were involved in piracy and copyright infringement by enabling users to download or stream pirated movies and TV shows. This is in violation of Section 216 of the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines and the Rules on Voluntary Administrative Site Blocking.
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Citing a 2015 report from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), IPOPHL said that YTS is among the world’s most prolific sites for pirating copyrighted content. The report estimated that the site has a library of around 4,500 infringed movie titles. The flagged YTS-associated sites are also listed in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s WIPO Alert, an online platform for reporting copyright-infringing websites.
Following IPOPHL’s request, the National Telecommunications Commission issued a memorandum on May 16, instructing local internet service providers to block access to these sites and report their compliance within five days.
In a statement, the MPA said they would continue to work closely with the Philippine government and the local creative industry to combat digital piracy. Among the members of the MPA are Netflix Studios, Disney, Warner Bros, and Sony Pictures.