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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."
How would TBP know that the visitors were from the Netherlands anyway? As far as I know, there is not much to go buy other than an IP address, which can easily be hidden by almost any proxy.
The judge was clearly pissed off that nobody showed up. If you can't make it, you at least have an attorney put in an appearance. When nobody shows up there isn't much you can do and the judge is going to be pissed off. It is like you are questioning the validity of the court.
And that is a really bad beginning to something you would like to win.
It's a bit more interesting than that, though. BREIN was actually sueing the company that was planning to take over TPB, expecting an easier grant from the judge (which they got). This opens the door to forcing ISP's to block certain websites, something which BREIN has been trying for but has hitherto miserably failed at. This is all just a sham to set up jurisprudence to slowly swing the courts in their favor. I think I'm gonna go BREINwash their CEO.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Do they even live in the Netherlands? Are their servers in the Netherlands? If not, why should they care what they want them to do?
-SaNo
"Neuken in de keuken" does not mean any of the things listed there :)
Yeah, cuz Courts are especially known for being that dumb and putting up with jackassery.
Seriously, you pull that shit, there's going to be arrest warrants out for contempt violations, and that means you're going to at the least, be courting extradition.
It's also a DUTCH court..they are not Dutch and do not own a Dutch business. This Judge is out of his juristdiction and can basicly go blow himself.
Nice try, but sending a letter which states, "We are not able to attend," is proof that you received the summons. Of course it's bad form to just not show-up. That's considered an insult to the judge because you're wasting his time, and the proper thing would have been to ask for a postponement to a more-convenient time.
I think what we're witnessing here is a bunch of arrogant people who don't realize that pissing-off the judge tends to sway him to rule against you. If the Piratebay took a different tactic, like your typical politician of smiling even when you're filled with hate, they could probably convince the judge to come-over to their side.
"Play the victim" is also a valid tactic. - Poor, defenseless citizens being attacked by a big billion-dollar corporation. "C'mon judge, we'll be smashed like bugs if you don't help us out."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I guess there's something to be said for sovereignty. Seems the main effect of the European Union has been to limit individual rights.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Both are EU countries. Not sure if that has any relevance here, IANAL.
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You're assuming that Sweden and the Netherlands don't have treaties to enforce each other's court judgments. I don't for certain one way or the other, but considering they're both members of the EU I'd be very surprised if they don't have something like that in place.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Umm.. how is any of this applicable in a foreign court? Does this mean that a Japanese court can just send me a summons for tomorrow and I somehow need to figure out how to get there? This is just beyond bizarre. What about national sovereignty? By this standard every single site on the web will need to obey every single local ordinance IN THE WORLD. This would, obviously, make the Internet impossible, as almost anything you do is going to be illegal somewhere. This would make it illegal to lambaste jeebus on an American site, due to Irish anti-blasphemy laws. It would effectively illegalize pornography. I really hope that this is not valid, or the Web as we know it will cease to be.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Well, I don't know which ones he is talking about but i would call taking away the right to own property a pretty big one. Think they didn't take it away? Before they could only pull eminent domain if it was in the interest of the entire community, like running an electric grid to power an entire community. Now SCOTUS has ruled they can take your land away to give it to Walmart for a new supercenter. I'd say that was a pretty big change.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.