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The Pirate Bay Ordered To Block Dutch Users
secmartin writes "In a totally unexpected ruling, a Dutch court has decided that The Pirate Bay should block visitors from the Netherlands within 10 days or face a fine of €30,000 per defendant per day. Peter Sunde has already announced that he will appeal the ruling. Even though the defendants sent a letter explaining that they were unable to come to the hearing and provided arguments in their favor, these were ignored by the judge because they failed to appear in his court. The full text of the ruling was just published (in Dutch, PDF) by Peter Sunde, and further coverage is available at Forbes."
Remcokatz on twitter was nice enough to translate the verdict into english and put the result on.
They do not have. But this was a 'kort geding'. It has no equivalent in US law. You could compare it to a preliminary injunction or summary judgement.
BREIN simply states: The rights of the artists we represent are violated (under Dutch copyright law you cannot offer services that allow third parties to infringe upon the copyrights of others), and this happens in the Netherlands, and it happens now and it needs to be stopped quickly because the damages cannot continue.
The TPB could have said, or could have sent someone who would have said: 'BREIN is lying, nothing is offered in the Netherlands' or whatever. Since they failed to show up and didn't send someone to represent them the judge, who does not do a full investigation of the facts, only has the 'evidence' BREIN provides.
From that point of view it is a clear violation of Dutch copyright law, which is happening under Dutch jurisdiction (albeit by Swedish persons) which needs to stop. And, since TPB was not there, they are 'convicted in absentia'. This is a normal course of events.
If you do not show up, the only thing the judge can do is check whether the claims are not blatantly unlawful. And if not, they are almost always awarded. As happened here. Most lawyers could have told them this would happen if they didn't send someone and the judge deemed it probable they did hear they were summoned.
The latter is so you can't run and hide in order to escape conviction.