Danish High Court Says ISPs Must Be Internet Policemen; Have To Block The Pirate Bay

from the keep-on-blocking dept

Wed, Nov 26th 2008 1:06pm — Mike Masnick

Earlier this year, we noted, with surprise, that a Danish court had ordered Tele2, a large ISP, to block all access to The Pirate Bay website. This followed an earlier ruling requiring Tele2 to block access to AllofMp3.com. It's never been clear why an ISP should take on the responsibility of blocking access to a site, and Tele2 appealed the ruling. Unfortunately, it looks as though the company has lost. The Danish High Court has apparently sided with the IFPI, and says that, indeed, Tele2 must block The Pirate Bay. Of course, this is unlikely to matter. Whenever these blocks are ordered, there are always ways around them, and the attention from the blocks tends to alert more people to the site's existence.

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Filed Under: blocking, denmark, high court
Companies: ifpi, pirate bay, tele2

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 1:33pm

Arrgghh

What be the pirate bay ?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 1:59pm

So if I manage to download something illegal it is not really my fault as begin stupid my ISP should protect me. I would tend to think this put a huge liability on the ISP. Maybe the ISP can block virus and spam and anything that says anything bad about the government or the judges mistress.
By monitoring this line of communications can they monitor phone call in case I want to tell a friend the license key over the phone conversation, or tell some via a phone how to hack something or arrange an illegal activity?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 2:01pm

The post above is exactly right. I'm not a fan of the slippery slope argument, but I think it definitely applies here.
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Søren Storm Hansen, 26 Nov 2008 @ 2:15pm

Correction: not high court
It's not the Danish high court who orderet the ISP to continue to block PirateBay but a regional court. But the case might very well go to suprime court: Tele2: Pirate Bay ruling is very unclear.
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Sos, 26 Nov 2008 @ 2:26pm

I see...
A change in domain name coming!

www.tehpiratebay.com
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TPBer, 26 Nov 2008 @ 2:45pm

I will just cause more traffic.
One of these articles years ago enlightened me to The Pirate Bay, and 5000+ movies and countless tunes later I have only the media to thank for showing me the way with a similar article.

The best part is all of the media can be played directly off hard drive plugged into any TV/DVD with a USB media slot, no more plastic DVD crap.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2008 @ 6:23pm

Oh yeah - there is no possible way around this block.
They have completely stopped access to TPB
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Thomas Christensen, 27 Nov 2008 @ 8:09am

Sad day
It's a sad day to be e Dane. We really need someone like EFF over here who'll fight this kind of juridical nonsense.

The debate over this is negligible in the Danish media.
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mightymaz, 29 Nov 2008 @ 1:33pm

"Of course, this is unlikely to matter...."

If you don't think it matters you clearly don't understand the problem.
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Ole Husgaard, 30 Nov 2008 @ 3:06pm

This is just pre-litigation
We explain about the case here: http://www.piratpartiet.dk/node/32
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Wilhem Busch, 30 Nov 2008 @ 6:54pm

TPB
More dikes more fingers !
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