Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 31st Jul 2009 15:46 UTC
Yesterday, the Dutch online community was surprised by a verdict from a judge who declared that The Pirate Bay had to make itself unavailable in The Netherlands. This verdict was cast in a case the Dutch RIAA/MPAA-like organisation BREIN had started against The Pirate Bay. With it being a widely known and established fact that downloading copyrighted content off the internet - even if the upload was illegal - is not illegal in The Netherlands, where does this verdict come from? Is it truly a win for the entertainment industry, and a loss for Dutch consumers? Not really - the situation is much, much simpler than that.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
The judge simple hasn't come to the point to establish wether TPB is active in the Netherlands. They didn't show up, nor did someone representing them show up. Thus BREIN got all that they asked, it is as simple as that.
This is a verdict against the people behind TPB, not against ISP's. ISP's don't need to do anything.
Next step is a swedish court confirming the verdict for Sweden. They will not look at the itself, just wether it matches the EU treaties for confirming verdicts of other member states. After that Swedish authorities will ensure the verdict is carried out.
Only solution for TPB is to appeal, show up, and defend themselves. They have plenty of possibilities: Not only downloading is legal, Kazaa was also ruled legal by the Supreme Court.
Edited 2009-07-31 20:05 UTC