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Danish ISP Tele2 Challenges Pirate Bay Blockade
Posted by
Zonk
on Wednesday February 06, @04:20PM
from the arr-they'll-never-take-the-rum dept.
from the arr-they'll-never-take-the-rum dept.
krasmussen writes "After Monday's injunction on Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to The Pirate Bay, the company has now decided to take the case further in court. 'We do not like being put in a role where we as ISP have to regulate people's freedom of speech' says Nicholai Pfeiffer, regulatory manager i Telenor, which owns Tele2. However, because the current ruling against Tele2 still stands, the customers are not going to regain access to The Pirate Bay at the moment."
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Courts Force Danish ISP to Block Torrent Tracker 145 comments
Pirate writes "A Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI, and ordered the Danish ISP Tele2 to block all access to the popular BitTorrent tracker. The Pirate Bay, currently ranked 28th in the list of most visited sites in Denmark, is working on countermeasures."
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ISP Block on Pirate Bay Not Having Desired Effect 177 comments
TechDirt is reporting that the recent block placed on The Pirate Bay torrent site is not only relatively ineffective, but actually driving more traffic to the site because of the attention. "The news from The Pirate Bay appears to confirm this suspicion. According to The Pirate Bay's new Court Blog, Danish traffic has not dropped since the implementation of the block. '...the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI,' the blog post reads. 'Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter - our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.' 'We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There's no noticeable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.'"
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Possible interim solution: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Possible interim solution: (Score:5, Informative)
The name is a parody on the chairman of the IFPI...
Re:Possible interim solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Get another IP? It's not as if it's hard to do; spammers seem to manage. Let the Danish courts play the same game of whack-a-mole that mail admins do.
No Get Out Of Jail Free Card (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry but you do realize the courts never bother with actual IP adresses? They just issue a general directive that requires the ISP to block access regardless of what it takes
English Translation (Score:5, Informative)
The Fogderetten (court) of Fredriksberg decided on Tuesday the 29/1 that Danish Internet provider Tele 2 must block their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay.
While the reasoning and contents of the verdict has not reached the public yet, the consequences are already clear: Danish Internet users have been censored and cannot visit the world's largest bittorrent tracker - The Pirate Bay. With this Denmark joins the company of Turkey and China, the two and only other countries in the world that blocks their citizens from accessing the site.
The case was brought to the court by the IFPI who had previously successfully used the same strategy with regards to the Russian music site AllofMP3. The IFPI is fighting a desperate struggle to keep control over how music is distributed, and The Pirate Bay has been a thorn in their eye for a long time.
On this page you can learn how to circumvent the block. We do not want to let the recording industry decide what information we as Internet users have access to.
P.S. I did not use a lot of time on this translation, it might have some typos and errors. Also I'm Norwegian and not Danish so please excuse any mistakes.
What Government Intervention? (Score:5, Insightful)
What rubbish! The Danish government has no responsibility for what the press does in a free country. As long as the press is not in violation of Danish law they're free to publish what they want.
And if you didn't read the facts it was the IFPI that brought the [Pirate Bay] case to court. That's not the Danish government either - so you are way out of line.
Re:What Government Intervention? (Score:4, Interesting)
Replace "press" with "search engine" in that and it applies quite well the Pirate Bay.
And if you didn't read the facts it was the IFPI that brought the [Pirate Bay] case to court. That's not the Danish government either
The court isn't the Danish government?
- so you are way out of line.
No, your government is being hypocritical. But really, all governments are hypocritical. This is a relatively small inconsistancy on the scale of government hypocrisy.
As a Dane, let me say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of the trunk of your car - you are still guilty of selling illegal copies.
Re:Guilty As Charged (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, since you asked, yes, you would probably be guilty here in my country, Norway.
In that case, when do we see Google banned (specifically, Google cache)? And the Wayback Machine [archive.org] while we're at it?
I'm not saying it to pick a fight, but it stands to reason that Google's cache and archive.org can be modified easily enough by anyone with the right know-how (basically, you just modify the site that either one is caching). Will the IFPI demand their removal next?
The whole Child Porn thing is IMHO a red herring. Child Pornography is direct evidence of a criminal act (namely, the sexual abuse of a minor), and blocking such things is done in deference to the victims, not because it's liable to bring civil charges. TPB, even if all it ever did was IP violation, contains zero evidence of any crime (IP and copyright violations are civil acts, not criminal ones - it only becomes criminal when you try to sell the copies).
In this case, we're talking about a court bending over backwards to satisfy the civil demands of a cartel, and in the process do two things:
1) create bad precedents, and
2) perform collateral blockage (I think the legal term is "estoppel"?) against legitimate distributors who use/rely on that particular torrent tracker.
Re:Guilty As Charged (Score:4, Interesting)
I did say probably because it would have to proved in a court of law. Not everything is as clear cut as you or I would like it. Even if I am a lawyer.
I only mentioned it to give you some insight into the way our countries work. It's certainly not done out of deference - it's simply censorship regardless. No court ever ruled the sites on the list are illegal. "First they came for..."
Sorry, that's only in the US. European law can be very different to what you are accustomed to.
Again that's not really true according to the example I just told you about (napster.no). Even linking is considering illegal here now. Not that I personally agree with it. They have yet to challenge access to The Pirate Bay here in Norway, but they have a law firm working on it.
Nope, that's not the way the Scandinavian Civil Law system works. The way precedents work in the Anglo-American Common Law system is not applicable here. It's not really a significant ruling, it's not even a High Court ruling. It can easily be overruled and interpreted away by the higher courts.
Re: !Guilty As Charged (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the Pirate Bay needs to find a way to include a whole bunch of other stuff in their indexes (witha checkbox to remove those results on queried results if the user would like) - then any similar laws wo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorta blasts your argument apart right there, doesn't it?
Less Than Honorable (Score:2)
Re:Less Than Honorable (Score:5, Funny)
If you object to this injunction, please write your state representative to have the law changed at:
Jack "The price is right!" Representation
12345 Pork Barrel Depot
Washington, DC 20004
If only they'd handle it this way, in the US of A.
ah the wonders of proxies (Score:4, Funny)
At least they put up a fight (Score:2)
I hope this ban gets lifted. The RIAA and their cronies have done too much damage to the economy already. Personally, I haven't
Dykes (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
This is not packet filtering, only a DNS block (Score:5, Informative)
The court did not order Tele2 to do any packet filtering. Tele2 will only have to remove piratebay.org from their DNS servers.
So no need for proxies or firewall circumvention tools this time.
Better solution (Score:5, Informative)
Bold move (Score:5, Insightful)
Parallel Universe? (Score:4, Informative)
Excuse me, but what Parallel Universe do you live in? Is it nice there? Because one thing is for sure here: European politicians do not agree on many things at all. I wonder what made you write that? There's not a single issue that doesn't come across differently in every European country. Take the War in Iraq, the EU CAP, the EU itself, religion and religious issues such as abortion, ethnic discrimination, immigration, European integration, NATO organisation and so on.
No, it's not important to the people of Europe. Any verdicts in Denmark will have practically zero value outside. If it was decided upon in the Court of First Instance perhaps. This case will not change anything in Europe in general.
You guys just dont get it.... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is only the opening Salvo... This thing is far from over.
Even Sweden will eventually fold to the political pressure, just like "secret" Swiss bank accounts eventually became not so secret. There is such a huge amount of money riding on this that eventually its going to happen, it just is, it is inevitable.
I mean enjoy the ride as long as you can, but like any other carnival ride, it eventually ends. Thats just the way it is. You or I might not like it, but thats long and short of it.
Re:Whoa (Score:5, Funny)