The figure has grown by 14.59% compared to the websites that the Telefónica operator blocked in 2020 and 64.42% compared to 2019 figures.
More than 3,700 websites blocked in 2021
The Judiciary, the Intellectual Property Commission, the General Directorate of Gaming and the Spanish Medicines Agency have the power to ask operators to prevent their clients from accessing certain websites if they could be the subject of a crime, infringe copyright or intellectual property, make available illegal games or sell unauthorized drugs, as the case may be.
Crime websites
The distribution of websites blocked by Movistar has cases of all types, with a total of 3,762 websites blocked during 2021, more than in 2020 (3,283 websites blocked) and 2019 (2,288 websites banned from access). As for the distribution by categories, in 2021 the following were blocked:
- 2,297 intellectual property infringement websites.
- 1,300 of illegal gambling.
- 136 of crimes.
- 29 of medicines.
Why were they blocked by copyright?
If we take a careful look at the most prominent section, only among websites blocked by copyright and violating copyright there are 2,297 of the 3,762 blocked in total, which means 61.05% of all URLs were banned. This has to do mainly with the fact of the presentation of 138 applications, of which three are considered continuous throughout the period of time referred to. These requests have given rise to the application of judicially authorized dynamic, weekly and monthly blocking processes.
LaLiga and Movistar Plus +
Two of them come from a court order which authorized Movistar to send weekly lists of URLs, domains and IP addresses to the rest of the operators, the latter being obliged to block said content within a maximum period of three hours, without the need for said pirated content to have to be authorized by a judicial authority some. Next year, when the data referring to 2022 is presented, the number should be lower, since the first part of that mandate expired on May 25, 2022, Movistar losing the authority for said procedure, and the second part will do on June 19, in just 9 days.
The third request considered continuous is the protocol of the Ministry of Culture for the reinforcement of the protection of intellectual property rights, which develops the application of judgments and court orders. All enable a list to be drawn up and sent, weekly and monthly, with URLs and domains that telecommunications operators or Internet access providers in Spain must block or unblock, as requested.
