Copyright Law

Swedish ISP Appeals Order to Block The Pirate Bay

By soulxtc

CEO of Black Internet changes his mind and says it can’t just “lay down” and allow it to happen.

A few weeks ago the entertainment industry managed to convince the Stockholm District Court to order Black Internet, the largest bandwidth provider of Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay, to cut off service to the site until it exhausts the remaining appeals of its conviction for copyright infringement.

Black Hat, of course complied, citing the expense and labor of appeal, and the site was partially down for 3hrs while traffic was rerouted to other ISPs.

It’s CEO now regrets that decision and plans to appeal.

“This is a very important question for all ISPs and we can’t just lay down,” said CEO Victor Möller. “The district court made a very controversial decision. The entire ISP business needs some clarity in this matter. A door has been opened and we don’t know what’s behind it.”

He’s finally realized that if a court can order an ISP to block one site then what’s to stop it from blocking others?

Möller says that he plans to join forces with other ISPs who also think it’s wrong for the court to order ISPs to block file-sharing sites like the Pirate Bay.

He’s probably referring to ISPs like Telia Sonera who’ve rebuffed similar demands until the Pirate Bay exhausts its appeals.

ISPs Bredbandsbolaget and Com Hem have echoed these sentiments, with the former emphasizing that it?s not the job of an ISP to dictate what sites customer’s can or cannot visit.

?We will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job,? said Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhofs, a few days before Black Hat was ordered to block the Pirate Bay. ?I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet.?

In the meantime, the Pirate Bay’s appeal is scheduled for November 13th and Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya, which supposedly still plans to turn it into a legal online media store, is oddly quiet.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on September 17, 2009 (boomark / email).