Danish ISP Tele2 Challenges Pirate Bay Blockade 129
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."
Possible interim solution: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Possible interim solution: (Score:5, Informative)
The name is a parody on the chairman of the IFPI...
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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.
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"Fogedretten" is the correct danish name for this special kind of court. It is a special kind of court used to get preliminary injunctions fast, and is considered a level lower than the court of first instance (called Byretten in danish).
And the court decision is basically a preliminary injunction. When Fogedretten considers the arguments of plaintiffs in such a case, they need no proof, only that the arguments are shown to be probable. Such a decision is almost always followed later by a real court case
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.
Still Not The Government (Score:2)
Yes, it does, doesn't it? And the government didn't act in either case.
And there have been cases in Scandinavia where even just linking has been enough to close you down. I would not rule it out even if you claim to be "just" a search engine.
Did you intentionally read that the wrong way? Because the sentence clearly says the IFPI is not a part of the Danish government. The courts a
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Hardly! The court is the party that made the decision based on the law, they're the party that enforces it. They're responsible.
Come on, you can't really be so disingenuous as to expect me to believe that an action of the court
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Really? The courts don't make their decisions based on Danish law? If not, what do they base their decisions on? And if so, doesn't the government pass laws, thereby influencing the courts?
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You have some strange definition of "government" if neither the courts or police are considered part of the government. I understand that the legislative, executive, and judiciary are independent branches, but they're independent branches of the government.
This is founded in the danish constitution. Where it is ALSO founded that no censorship is allowed in 77, with very few exceptions.
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The court is the court, and completely separated from the government, which has no right to control what the courts do or don't do.
Ok, explain to me how the system works in Denmark. Does the court not decide cases based on the law? If not, on what basis do they decide cases? Do they just pull decisions out of their ass?
If the court does decide cases based on the law, who writes the law? The legislature, I'd assume. Is the legislature part of the governme
Legal Concepts and Legality (Score:1, Insightful)
You are totally and utterly wrong. If the majority of files on the Pirate Bay were legal it would perhaps be a different matter. But the vast majority of files on The Pirate Bay are illegal and violate copyright laws in many or most countries. So the few legal torrents available don't change things at all.
If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of
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If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of the trunk of your car - you are still guilty of selling illegal copies.
Guilty As Charged (Score:2)
Well, since you asked, yes, you would probably be guilty here in my country, Norway.
Danish and Norwegian law is quite similar, and we also happen to be subjects of the same EU laws.
A few years ago we had a case against a simple linking site called napster.no. No files were ever stored on the server. Just simple links to other sites where the material was. Not only did they find the p
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.
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"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?"
Probably not. Despite the braying of the "it's just lke Goooooooooogle!" idiots, intent and scope are likely big factors European-style law, just as they are in the US. This goes for crimes as well as torts -- in Europe, juast as in the US,
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 wouldn't be able to affect them without affecting Google and every other search engine - and who's going to put an onerous burden on them?
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"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 wouldn't be able to affect them without affecting Google and every other search engine - and who's going to put an onerous burden on them?"
Such a tactic would depend on finding a court that didn't understand the difference between Google and a site set up for the purpose of promoting, facilitating and
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Google does the same thing.
Actually, no, they do not do the same thing. They do not directly and on purpose have links to infringing material. Whether this is legally big enough difference is another matter ...
Oh, btw, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom has gotten charge of about $200'000 in fines and of two years jail. The prosecutor is asking for extremely harsh punishment, the reasoning is that TPB has big advertisement income.
The charge is "conspiracy and help for copyright infringement" (i know, my
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Ehh, what do you mean by "directly"? Why do you claim it is directly in one case but not the other? How do you get to the "on purpose"? In one case the site is automatically going arround looking for files and index them if they find them (one have to actually take specific actions to op-out). In the other case, the ones with the files has to tell the site to index it. (Yes I know one can go to google and tell them as well.) The only
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>what copyright law protects is the right of the copyright
>owner to control the manufacture and distribution of copies
>of the copyrighted material.
Exactly what copyright protects vary som between countries. The above is not a complete description of everything that is protected. It excludes for example various forms of public performance and transfering a work to the public. I don't think we disagree what copyright protects
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the vast majority of files on The Pirate Bay are illegal and violate copyright laws in many or most countries
Bittorrent files contain only information about other files available from other sources. A bittorrent file contains NO copyrighted data and the copyright laws of "many or most countries" do not apply to them.
If you sell pirated and legal CDs out of the trunk of your car - you are still guilty of selling illegal copies.
And if I tell you where a local garage sale is being held is that illegal t
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All the Pirate Bay does is provide maps to garage sales, the actually files aka garage sales are stored on private computers with Internet IPs. Since garage sales are illegal in Denmark, they must rule again
As a Dane, let me say... (Score:3, Interesting)
I also believed that the papers (and, more recently, Wikipedia) should be able to show pictures of religious symbols. If the "infidels" (their words) can't take it and start burning embassies, who's being narrow
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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.
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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 or if it's even possible.
The courts don't have to bother with such mundane issues as the time and money it will take to block a moving target. They will just fine the ISP if they don't take enough action in the eyes of the court. The target can move, the
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But if they do block the IPs it's just a matter of getting a dynmic IP (Joke)... But multiple IPs would do, they just change every day... no problem, just make sure the old IPs still redirect, so users of cached DNS resolution isn't left out...
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Nice thought, though.
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OTOH, they can deflect the 'aiding and abetting' charge by saying it has nothing to do with TPB. Simply post a news/press release about how it's part of a super-secret networking efficiency R&D project that Tele2 has going (or somesuch)... as long as the proxies are legit and legally open (e.g. no compromised machines), IMHO it would be fairly litigation-proof.
Now if anyone were to build a toolbar(?) that any ol' user could instal
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principle != workaround if it suits (Score:2)
You seem to misunderstand the meaning of principles. They're called that because they're considered to be of the utmost importance -- i.e., when you would rather go to jail than violate your principles. Tele2 are not "sticking to their principles"; they're going along with what the law tells them to do, even if they think it's wrong.
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It isn't that TPB is some great big illegal operation (it is perfectly legal within the framework of their jurisdiction), nor that they act as a torrent tracker (they are, for torrents regardless of content*).
The big deal is that there is a great big precedent where information is blocked due to content.
We often praise people who find ways to break past China and Saudi Arabia's forms of Internet censorship... why all the sudden do you cheer the same censorship in
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(nod) Yes, I understand that you can't mod and post within the same article.
The big deal is that there is a great big precedent where information is blocked due to content.
Isn't that what a C&D letter does? When you shut down child-porn sites, aren't you doing it on the basis of content?
We often praise people who find ways to break past China and Saudi Arabia's forms of Internet censorship... why all the sudden do you cheer the same censorship in an EU
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Sorta blasts your argument apart right there, doesn't it?
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Fact is, I can use Google to find any info available on TPB. You must also support the closing of Google then, no?
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To compare TPB with google is frankly stupid.
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Its amazing the bullshit argument people will trot out to defend criminals if they think it means they can get free stuff...
Go on, keep modding me troll because you don't like hearing the truth...
Less Than Honorable (Score:2)
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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)
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Fortunately I live in Canada the Tortuga of the internet, where the torrents flow like water and our government is still afraid of its people.
unless you use Rogers or Bell C, who both seem to be taking a dislike to torrents, and encrypted traffic too.
though fortunately, Bell is required by CRTC regs to lease out their lines to other providers for a fixed fee, so it's a near-certainty that anyone wanting to get away from them can find an alternate ISP that doesn't do such things.
Whoa (Score:1)
Re:Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
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and without P2P, what would your average joe do on the internet? (except view webpages, but that he could do of a modem)
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P2P is for porn.
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Maybe they had too many call center reps quit after the shit storm of callers complaining about their breaking the internet?
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 bought any RIAA-affiliated music since 2002 and I have a lot of songs, go to Indiefeed or something similar for real 'free' music and then sponsor those artists.
Dykes (Score:2, Funny)
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Challenges? (Score:1)
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.
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Better solution (Score:5, Informative)
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What are they going to do next? Keep asking ISP's to adjust their DNS records? Where to draw the line? The Pirate Bay has, after all, still not been ruled down by Swedish court, and Denmark AFAIK uses the same kind of copyright laws due to also being members of the EU. So correct me if I'm wrong, but these should be pretty harmonized as for those laws.
Bold move (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why does people break the law and download mosi
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.
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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.
You are not looking at it from the right angle. I am obviously not saying that the entire EU ministry is agreeing on everything. My point is that some countries in Europe are looking at internet regulations (Germany, Spain, etc) and Denmark will surely not be of great help from this point of view since they've clearly taken the first step of controlling the internet. So if Denmark does this, Germany watches that, it will have a good reason to follow because it certainly looks better to imitate Denmark rath
Crossborder Politics (Score:2)
You think this is the first such action? What do you call taking down Oink? Or Tv-links.co.uk? That happened in the UK a few months ago by the way. Or Sweden attacking ThePirateBay? This is not a new or innovative form of policy.
I think it's you who's not looking at it from the right angle. Europe a
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Well, I think the GP is right. You'll
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If it were me... (Score:1)
Ohmygod (Score:1)
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For the first time ever I'm actually proud of being from Denmark.
For the first time ever? Wow, man. There is tons of other stuff to be proud of. The vikings, if you consider them Danish, were quite apt shipbuilders, sailors and traders. Then there's the Rosetta stone. In more modern times, Danish companies make world-leading noise measurement apparatus and hearing aids; the Danish institute of technology (DTU) provides unique magnetism detectors for the Ørsted satellite, as well as (the only?) star-positioning camera technology.
Oh, and Carlsberg!
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Good Neighbors (Score:2)
Kjære nabo, is this when I tell you that Tele2 in Denmark [tele2.com] is a division of Norwegian Telenor? ;)
Come on! It was a joke! (Score:2)
Come on, it was just a joke! :)
Of course, the fact that the company is Norwegian owned doesn't change much, but the management does what it's owners want. So I suppose Telenor might want Tele2 Denmark to appeal the verdict to sell more. Or it could be the management decided on their own they had to fight it so they don't loose customers. All the same, I was just joki
This thing ain't over yet (Score:2)
The other ISPs in the Danish market though do not seem to be willing to play along [politiken.dk] (yes, I just linked to a Danish article. No, I'm not translating the WHOLE THING!):
The top part goes something like:
ISPs Ignore Bailiff's Ban on thepiratebay.org - Frustrated ISPs are continuing to hold the door to thepiratebay.org open, even if the bailiffs court has asked Tele2 to close down access.
So, what with most of the
Tele2 (Score:1)
Top Ten (Score:2)
Oh, I saw this episode of Lettermen! I believe the list was titled "Things AT&T will never say".
American ISP (Score:2)
Priceless! (Score:2)
Buying a
Buying a
(see http://thejesperbay.org/ [thejesperbay.org])
- Jesper
Official /. stance (Score:1)
On one hand, what they're doing is technically illegal, and they're fully aware of it. On the other hand, they're doing it for a very good reason: to test, provoke and popularize the concept of free speech and of course, to bring grand attention to the evils of modern copyright law (Thank^H^H^H^H^HFUCK YOU Sonny Bono!)
Personally, I like The Piraty Bay's attitude and I support their cause. The fact that they have a real life
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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.
You misunderstand net resilience (Score:2)
Yes P2P as we know it now will likely end up being dealt a heavy blow, but then people will move on to something else. This simply isn't a war that can be won without cutting access to entire types of data stream at the ISP simultaneously destroying lots of valid business applications at the same time.
It's futile to try and fight
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The first paragraph should've said:
When enough standard torrent sites like this are shut down and enough people are affected people will instead start using encrypted, anonymous services which aren't so easy to shut down.
I'm sure there is plenty of mistakes in the rest of it but that initial sentence just outright didn't even make sense so I will now go and hang my head in shame.
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No worries, we all let our fingers get ahead of our brains now and again.
^_^ (Score:2)
Now, i wonder do they sell anything i could as a foreigner buy so they get my support ^^
No censorship ty!
Hurray for Tele2!
The most important issues are these: (Score:2)
The most important issues are these:
1.) Should private organizations (such as IFPI) be in a position where they can censor the webpages of another party (such as a private citizen) simply because they dislike the information distributed there?
No court has made any ruling c
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But the fact is, that they have *NOT* been convicted of anything. Hell, there hasn't even been a trial yet which determines the legality (or illegality) of their content.
For that reason alone, their site should not be closed or censored.
- Jesper
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here's idea: mask the traffic as VOIP, that way it will get high priority also