The Pirate Bay Successfully Appeals Italian Block

An anonymous reader writes "Last month, The Pirate Bay was blocked in Italy. The Swedish tracker appealed the ruling, and have emerged victorious. When they will be back online in Italy is not known, as news of this development is rather fresh."

Comments

I don't see an article

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, where's the article?

Re:I don't see an article

[JackieBrown]

http://www.slyck.com/story1771_The_Pirate_Bay_Sucessfully_Appeals_Italian_Block

Well thats what happens

[SheepLauncher]

when u get way to much money from ads.

Re:Well thats what happens

[Jaysyn]

Pirate Bay has ads?

Re:Well thats what happens

[SleptThroughClass]

Pirate Bay has ads?

Sure. And they'll stop running them when the advertisers pay up. Arr.

Good for them

[BorgAssimilator]

Hopefully this will discourage other nations / organizations from blocking sites like that, but only time will tell, and I don't have my hopes up.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly won't encourage China to unblock the pirate bay.
It's ironic that in the pirating capital of the world you can't access one of the most popular sources of pirate material.
Bizarrely Pirate Bay trackers are still accessible making the reason for the block somewhat unfathomable.

Re:Good for them

[daveime]

Yes but the chinese tend not to "pirate" so much, rather they make a duplicate of something so it "looks and feels" almost the same as the original.

The missus bought a Chinese "Nokia 99i", believe it or not ... picked it up in some shady market for about 100 bucks ... it's got pretty much all the functionality of the real N95, plus a TV tuner built in. Of course, it also has that chinese chip that burns out 1 millisecond AFTER the warranty has expired, but as this one didn't even come with a warranty, let alone a box, even switching it on tends to be a game of Russian Roulette these days.

Oh and like everything else made in China these days, it has a port of MAME with all the old favorites like 1942, Donkey Kong etc ... I swear to god, they do that with every electronic device these days. Want a DVD player ? comes with games ... want a TV ? comes with games ... want a bloody toaster ? comes with games.

So why exactly would they want to access the Pirate Bay ... they'll simply roll their own copy instead.

Arrr it be slashed and it be dotted arrr

[davidwr]

Aye matey but for certain it shall live again in the morn.

Re:Arrr it be slashed and it be dotted arrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye matey but for certain it shall live again in the September morn.

Ode to the Slashdotted webpage? Italians welcoming the Pirate Bay back? Could work either way, come September Morn.

Stay for just a while
Stay, and let me look at you
Its been so long, I hardly knew you
Standing in the door
Stay with me a while
I only want to talk to you
Weve traveled halfway round the world
To find ourselves again

September morn

Taken out of context of course. Darn my associative mind, useful for multiple choice exams though.

Re:Arrr it be slashed and it be dotted arrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Darn my associative mind

You do realise that's how all `normal' human brains work, right?

Slashdot, where everyone thinks they're special.

Re:Arrr it be slashed and it be dotted arrr

[Anonymous Coward]

Some more life experience might improve your reading skills, but doubt you will ever gain the mind reading ability that you seem to think you have. But who am I to talk, sitting here after a lifetime of relationships, most of my oldest friends dead, watching the leaves change color on a September morn. Darn is sometimes just a polite word for damn.

Encouraging censorship

[T0wner]

Ignoring the legal arguments for once. Do we really want governments to censor what the public sees or does all in the name of protection?

You don't have to go there if you don't agree with it. You don't have to break the laws of your country if you choose not too. Do most people abide by laws because they're worried about the punishments or because they believe in them? There will always be some who don't, in a democracy it is a majority which matters.

However in a democracy surely it is important that the people have a choice? In this case the judge has decided it is not for him to decide.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[PunkOfLinux]

Interesting point - that laws are able to be broken, and, as such, people can follow them based on belief, fear of punishment, or not at all.

And, yes, it is the citizen's responsibility to make their own decisions.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[Kjella]

Ignoring the legal arguments for once. Do we really want governments to censor what the public sees or does all in the name of protection?

Ok, let me try to flamebait this one a little. Do you want one world law? Do you want a world where one country reject certain laws or ignore the law, then everyone around the world can do as well through the Internet? While it might sound like a nice ultra-liberalist ideal it's closer to anarchy than anything else. Do you want a world where the parliaments and courts just throw up their hands and say "Sure, we can outlaw this in OUR country, but it won't stop anyone from getting it from Europe/Asia/Whereever"? Nor would I want the least common denominator with only the content all countries can agree on. In many ways we are one people through the Internet but we don't have one set of laws nor do I think there should one. In some fashion it still ought to be so that my nation makes laws for my people, and your nation makes laws for your people. Leaving such a huge loophole as the Internet is the same as not enforcing the law which means it in practise will cease to be law. The majority wouldn't want to break the law in the first place, but if it's not enforced or punished then it won't stop anybody from breaking the law.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[Trogre]

That sounds like a nice idea, but I'll still keep the locks on my house, thanks.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[Artifakt]

I'm going to try and present a few opposite arguments, recognizing that if yours are flamebait, so are mine, perhaps more so.
      Do we want a world where all crimes are punished so drastically that any potential criminal would have to be insane to risk even a very slight chance of getting caught? While it might sound like a solid conservative's law and order ideal, it's closer to totalitarianism than anything else. Do you want a world where deterrence is so all important that voluntary compliance with the law can never be enough?
      It's a fact that most laws work as well as they do, because many people, usually a substantial majority, agree with them. Where a law is widely considered unfair, it seems to either be changed, or to spawn new laws that exist only to prop up the old ones, so that achieving compliance soon takes whole new volumes of laws. (Witness all the additional drug related laws, setting mandatory minimums, disallowing plea bargaining, making related activities count as conspiracies or criminalizing paraphenalia and not just the drugs themselves. What do all these additional laws exist for, except the majority doesn't really agree with the basic drug laws in the first place, or at the least, is lukewarm in its agreement and a substantial minority disagrees quite strongly.)

Re:Encouraging censorship

[Zemran]

But we are talking about civil law and not criminal law. Should a site be blocked for the sake of one person's view? If so you will soon have all sites critical of the Republicans blocked. If this were a case of criminal law (i.e. actual theft) then the arguements would be different but no crimal law is being broken. If the Democrats where saying that www.republican.com should be closed down because they frequently defame democrats, would you agree? I think that is a civil action that should be settled in a court.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

In some fashion it still ought to be so that my nation makes laws for my people, and your nation makes laws for your people.

I bring you this analogy: You have a 3000 mile open border with every country in the world, and you discover some people crossing the border illegally. Blocking a website is like erecting a fence post at the point where the illegal stuff crossed the border. Sure, you can do it, but the criminals are just going to go around it.

The only way to effectively police the border is to close most of it. Ban encryption, tunnels and anything that isn't on the white list. And if the choice is between anarchy and totalitarianism, give me anarchy any day.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[TooMuchToDo]

OH SNAP!

Seriously though, excellent counter-argument =)

Re:Encouraging censorship

[PunkOfLinux]

Did you even read what I said? I said it should NOT be up to the government to do these things. It is up to individuals to determine whether they want to break the law.

Re:Encouraging censorship

[KGIII]

Can I play? :)

Do we want a world where we set the values for other countries or do we want a world with diversity where each country can make their own rules (even censorship if they want) if the citizen agree to that style of living/government?

We seem awfully eager (I'm pretty damned guilty of this) to tell other people that they should think and act more like us. We want China to change but it seems that the majority of China is pretty content with the China that they have. We went off to change Iraq and look at how well we fixed that.

If Italy wanted to ban TPB and the Italians were happy with their government (and could move, that should be an important thing too) then I say let 'em. Fortunately they didn't and got some commonsense. That whole freedom of choice thing, including the freedom to allow other people to be governed as they see fit...

Communication barrier

[sayfawa]

Was the hearing 6 days ago? 'Cause that would've given the Pirate Bay an unfair advantage.

Epic WIN

[Anonymous Coward]

For TPB... w00t!

Appeal granted, not won?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the original case was decided last month, I seriously doubt that it has actually been overturned already, unless Italian courts are much swifter than the rest of the world. The document provided, which TFA calls the "order which grants the appeal" is merely that. It means that the court will hear an appeal, it does not mean TPB has already won. A little slip of paper like that certainly doesn't seem like a court brief.

When you factor in preparation/delay time, filing, and turnaround, it seems about right for a motion like this to take about a month. The actual arguments will probably occur starting in several weeks, and a decision may not be forthcoming for several months, all told.

As I understand that...

[Wooky_linuxer]

the granting of the appeal effectively suspends the original decision. So, until a counter-appeal overturns that, or, the merit of the case is judged, TPB has won. It is an temporary victory of course. IANAL, and IANAI (I am not an Italian) though, so I might be talking out of my ass here. Oh wait! I have Italian citizenry so I guess I am Italian after all.

TPB not up yet

[tingeber]

The Bay is still off-limits from Rome, Italy (Alice provider, the biggest on the market).
The ban got a lot of (narrow-minded and misinformed) media coverage, the appeal got none. Hope things change.

Why block it?

[FreeWorld Community]

Pirate bay is legal, at least where it is hosted. Why block it when internet surfers nowadays find more ways to bypass the censors.

Re:Why block it?

[cliffski]

censors?
what is being censored? AFAIK, everything on TPB is quite happily available somewhere else. The problem people have with it is they take COMMERCIAL stuff that costs millions to make, and reproduce it freely, without paying the creators a penny, and pocket the ad revenue.
Don't try and justify torrents of Spiderman 3 by crying about censorship.
If TPB gave a fuck about free speech, it would remove all the Hollywood movies and music and purely host documents from civil rights groups.
I don't see many of those in the top 100...

Re:Why block it?

[meringuoid]

The problem people have with it is they take COMMERCIAL stuff that costs millions to make, and reproduce it freely, without paying the creators a penny, and pocket the ad revenue.

TPB do no such thing. They provide a venue for their users to take material (commercial, GPL, Creative Commons, public domain, they don't care at all) and reproduce it freely. All you'll find on the TPB website itself is trackers, and a means to search them. TPB tell you where to get free copies of commercial material, but do not themselves provide that material.

It's just the same as what Napster used to do. US courts decided that was illegal. Swedish courts disagree.

As for the ad revenue, I doubt there's too much of that. Remember, their audience consists chiefly of pirates; do you think these people have any qualms about using Adblock Plus?

Re:Why block it?

[Pofy]

>If TPB gave a fuck about free speech, it
>would remove all the Hollywood movies and
>music and purely host documents from civil
>rights groups.

They don't host ANY documents though, so that would be hard. besides, it is not them, but users, that post infomration what they (the users) have available for others. Similary they don't decide what end up on top 100, their users do. TPB doesn't take anything and doesn't reproduce anything as you seem to imply.

Re:Why block it?

[Sique]

Moreso, to actually take down Hollywood content they had to actively assess and thus download and analyse everthing that is tracked on their servers, effectively reversing their own standing: That they are a plattform provider for trackers, nothing else.

Re:Why block it?

[Troed]

If TPB gave a fuck about free speech, it would remove all the Hollywood movies and music and purely host documents from civil rights groups.

One of Sweden's biggest artists just released his new single - on Piratebay. Why should they remove legit content?

Re:Why block it?

[cliffski]

what percentage of the music is there with the copyright holders permission?
1%?
less?
Get real.

Re:Why block it?

[Troed]

Could you please explain why you think the percentage is relevant?