Belgian Court Realizes That ISPs Shouldn't Be Forced To Block File Sharing

from the about-time dept

Mon, Oct 27th 2008 8:58pm — Mike Masnick

A year and a half ago, we wrote about a Belgian court requiring an ISP to block all file sharing, and saying that after six months to implement a filtering solution, the ISP would be fined 2,500 euros per day that file sharing still occurred on its network. The court had been convinced by the IFPI that blocking all file sharing was as simple as installing the filtering software from the entertainment industry darling, Audible Magic. Of course, as has been seen over and over again, Audible Magic's "magic bullet" solution isn't particularly good, and certainly does very little to stop file sharing. Apparently, Belgian ISPs have finally been able to convince the judge of that fact, and he's reversed the original ruling, saying that the ISP in question is no longer subject to the fine. Apparently, even the recording industry lawyers had to admit that they misled the court over the efficacy of Audible Magic's filtering software.

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Filed Under: belgium, filtering, isps
Companies: audible magic, ifpi, riaa

3 Comments

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OwN'T, 27 Oct 2008 @ 10:40pm

lol @ these guys
@ the end of the day.... sooner or later.... these geniuses r gonna realize that you CANT STOP COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!! its gonna happen... get over it and move on.... or stop producing content and go sell hotdogs. Either way, the world is probably better off. Rather than sue its clientel they should be trying 2 figure out how to capitalize on it. i mean jeeez. when will they take the hint? really?
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2008 @ 11:24pm
  
  Re: lol @ these guys
  I think all these hints are just noise that they've brainwashed themselves to tune out. They're stuck so far down in their rut that they have no visibility out of it to see that there are better ways, so they just keep doing what they've always done, thinking their way is the best.
  
  Greed to this extent can only be compared to a disease. A disease that impairs their ability for logical thought.
  
  Or there's what Albert Einstein said: "Insanity: the belief that one can get different results by doing the same thing."
  
  Either way, they're not much different from someone who commits suicide. There's no other way and everyone will be sorry when they're gone!
  
  If they only knew...
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New tactic, 27 Oct 2008 @ 11:00pm

New tactic
Maybe this is a valid new tactic for deterring stupid actions. Just implement all the lame horrible ideas that these morons propose. In no time, it will become very clear how inneffective and generally worthless their solutions are. THen maybe we can get somewhere once the judges realize that the riaa and the like are full of it.
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