Copyright Law

Dutch Court Orders Pirate Bay to Block Netherlands

By soulxtc

Gives it 10 days before facing a $42,000 p/day fine.

Late last week a Dutch court ordered the Pirate Bay’s founders to begin blocking access by Dutch citizens or face a fine of 30,000 euros ($42,906 USD) p/day if it fails to comply after 10 days.

The deadline began this past Saturday.

The case was a result of legal action brought by Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN which has long waged a battle against BitTorrent tracker sites in that country. It is the reason why Demonoid had to close up shop and move across the pond to Canada back in 2007.

The court ordered them “each separately and together, to stop and keep stopped the infringements on copyright and related rights of Stichting Brein in the Netherlands.”

Co-founder Peter Sunde noted that the order doesn’t have much success of ever happening being that they claim to have relinquished control over the site way back in 2006.

“None of us have access to even block everything, so good luck with that,” he twittered. “I wrote a letter to the court telling them that.”

BREIN apparently decided not to wait for the outcome of the Pirate Bay’s appeal of a previous conviction for copyright infringement in a Swedish court back in April, nor the emergence of a new, legal incarnation of the BitTorrent tracker site with the help of Global Gaming Factory expected to take place later this month.

Because it couldn’t find the site’s founders, BREIN took the unorthodox step of notifying the Pirate Bay’s founders via Facebook and Twitter. They said they were still unaware of the trial and so did not attend, but they’ve announced their intention to appeal the verdict.

The ruling is especially foolish because it suggests that regional blocking of a website will be effective in reducing piracy. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of ways to circumvent any efforts to block the Pirate Bay, not the least of which are VPN services like the recently advertised ItsHidden which is free to use.

Stay tuned.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on August 03, 2009 (boomark / email).