Court Says Telenor Doesn't Need To Block The Pirate Bay

from the onwards dept

Fri, Nov 6th 2009 2:57pm — Mike Masnick

I'm heading over to Norway in the next few days to give a talk at the Nordic Music Week event, and it's nice to see that the courts in that country seem to recognize how silly the IFPI's demands that major ISP Telenor block access to The Pirate Bay are. Telenor was smart enough to fight back, and the courts have now said that Telenor is not liable for what its users do, and should not have to block access to a site like The Pirate Bay. From TorrentFreak on the ruling:

The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site.... In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be "unnatural."

Good to see a court recognize that the entertainment industry doesn't own the internet, and shouldn't be the one to determine what is and what is not legal online.

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Filed Under: blocking, norway
Companies: ifpi, telenor, the pirate bay

4 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Nov 2009 @ 3:12pm

But if the content industries fail to control the internet than that means everybody might make different choices about what content they consume.

What happens when people watch hours of video on youtube and not hours of video on television? Or on content industry-enabled websites? What happens when they text their friends all day not talking about some movie the content industry created, just for them?

What happens? I'll tell you what happens. Expressive human culture dies, that's what happens.

No more movies, or music, or entertainments. All gone. Thanks to people who steal! And lie! And cheat!

Actually, are those people making content? They sound like an interesting bunch.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Nov 2009 @ 4:40pm

Re:
(citation needed)
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Brain, 6 Nov 2009 @ 5:05pm

Re:
Brain: Well, Pinky - What are we going to do today?

Pinky: Tell AC he forgot the sarcasm tag?

Brain: No - We are going to take over the world, of course
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nishiko, 6 Nov 2009 @ 8:11pm

Smart and obvious ruling...
... but then again, nothing can be taken for granted anymore when it comes to the pressure and fear the deep pockets of the music and movie industry has been creating.

The entertainment industry is acting like it owns the internet lately, and need to be put back in their place.
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