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Supreme Court Blocks Pirate Bay
2010-06-24 01:12:01 Posted
by: ragaman7 Category: Copyright
[via zeropaid.com by Jared Moya] This ruling paves the way for copyright holders to obtain court orders to force ISPs to block other sites they accuse of copyright infringement.
Denmark’s Supreme Court has ruled that ISP Telenor must continue to block customers’ access to Swedish BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay.
In its ruling The Supreme Court emphasizes the importance of “the large-scale infringement of intellectual property rights” that takes place through The Pirate Bay website, and stresses that the right holders have a “substantial interest that is important to protect” in bringing this infringement to a halt.
“The court’s decision is commendably clear. It confirms that the ISP’s are part of the solution to the piracy problem,” says the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) lead attorney, Johan Schlüter. “The decision is an important step in the right holders’ efforts to create an efficient market for movies, music and literature on the Internet. It is crucial to the continued growth and success of the legal services that the illegal services are restricted as much as possible.”
The decision follows a years-long court battle that began with an initial lower court ruling back in February of 2008 where a judge found that Telenor, then Tele2, was assisting in the facilitation of copyright infringement by allowing its customers to access the site.
“The communication with the Pirate Bay is not in itself a violation of copyright,” countered Jens Ottosen-Stott, chairman of TI, the Danish telecom industry, and Danish Telia’s Legal Director at the time. “We make communication possible for our subscribers, then have others to take a position on whether it is illegal or not, and intervene. It is not our job.”
The decision means that perhaps other sites that the IFPI accuses of copyright infringement could find themselves suddenly blocked by the Denmark’s ISPs.
“The consequence may be that there will be a major push by the IFPI’s of the world to attempt to have similar websites blocked,” said Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer, Telenor’s Regulatory Chief.
And he’s he right. Now that the IFPI has managed to block The Pirate Bay it will pretty much have free reign to have any other site blocked that it accuses of copyright infringement.
“Freedom of expression is at risk and at this rate will ultimately destroy the internet as we know it,” says Troels Møller, spokesperson for Piratgruppen, a non-partisan group supporting file-sharing,
free speech and privacy, in a press release.
Danish IT experts, though you don’t have to be an expert to know it only takes seconds to bypass any ISP-level site blocking system, have also criticized the ruling, and are concerned that the number of blocked sites will slowly grow over time.
“It’s a slippery slope,” said Mikkel Svendsen deMib. “And when the people maintaining these lists find out that it still doesn;t restrict their access to The Pirate Bay or some of the many other BitTorrent sites, they will go after additional measures.”
The IFPI realizes that people will still be able to access the site, and doesn’t seem to care. It thinks the real message of the ruling is that illegal downloading is harmful to society. It also won’t say what sites are next, but says that the ruling now gives it the power to go after any site it sees with “systematic copyright violation.”
Could Google be next? UPDATE |
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