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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."
The Pirate Bay should refuse to heed that request/order on grounds that it is undemocratic to discriminate against users on the basis of religion, ethnicity, nationality or otherwise. Who can argue against that?
What we need to do, is get a US judge to order the Dutch Judge to over turn the ruling or face a fine of $100,000(US) for every Dutch user that is prevented from accessing the Pirate Bay. ...
On a side note, does the Judge realize that a simple proxy server can bypass his ruling? There is NO WAY to enforce such a stupid ruling. The Technically Illiterate should not be making what amounts to a new law regarding Technological issues.
This whole thing would be silly if the pointy headed elites weren't involved. Is it me, or are they (pointy headed elites) some of the stupidest people on the planet or what?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Put up a page for all Dutch users saying that they have been banned, then provide links on how to circumvent the ban. Any lawyer here know if they can get away with that?
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It may be easy for a nerd to install e.g. SwitchProxy, and knock together some scripts to automate the maintenance of a list of working anonymizing proxy servers (and by the way, any old proxy is not good enough), but it's not that easy for Joe Public. Unless they're going to pay for a vpn service, the vast majority of Dutch people will be accurately blocked by their IP address. And since accessing TPB is not a fundamental human right, the tiny amount of collateral damage will be seen as insignificant.
Oh no... it's the future.
Well, the obvious solution is to put a "What country do you live in?" dropdown on the front page. Thus you no longer have to worry about IP addresses and all that. Sure the users may lie, but that's their problem...
BUT, most courts require proof you were served with papers to appear at court.
Honestly the Judge is the jackass here. If they were properly served and responded with "we cant make the court date" the judge cant do this.
Otherwise, I could sue every one of you in court, and if you did not know of the court case, would not show up, and I would automatically win.
The whole story is not there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I read the rough translation over at http://drop.io/breinpaidforthis_english
The only bit interesting was:
In most jurisdictions, if hold yourself out as intentionally disobeying an order of the court, they can throw the book at you in your absense. It all hinges on how the judge decides to interpret your letter of intent - they can be strict and litteral, or understanding and wide. Saying you will not be attending is very different to being unable to attend, regardless of whatever else said. Consider, "I am unable to attend the meeting because a family member has died and I am at the funeral at that time. I will not come." and "[at that time]. Please rearrange meeting". The latter indicates intent to come, whereas the former does not.
I find it hard to believe that they don't have prescribed methods of good notice - ie: in the UK good notice can be at their abode, registered address, or place of work. Only when you have "good notice" can you reply on preceedures in absense.
Matt
The validity of the court SHOULD be questioned! I mean, they gave summons via *Twitter*! What kind of a kangaroo court is that?
Besides, it's a Dutch court asking a Swedish citizen to appear regarding a Swedish website. If you received a "summons" from a Chinese court to appear for violating their demands that you block all of their citizens from viewing your website, would you appear?
Provided the ruling stands in appeals (and they could appeal all the way up to the EU courts, of course), you're right.. the judges can be told to blow themselves until the Swedish authorities hand down the rulings.
However, in the mean time...
- if they appear in The Netherlands, they can be arrested.
- if they continue to not block the Dutch, then BREIN may have a case for Dutch -ISPs- to block TPB as alternative means of getting TPB blocked.
Foreign sites have been blocked before - think gambling sites - based on Dutch law and court cases, so it's not entirely unthinkable.
If you're served with court papers from your own country summoning you to the court, always go and make sure you're on time. However, when you get them from a foreign country, think twice about it and then don't go. The chances that you don't get a fair trial are too big even under normal circumstances (just the standard situation where you probably don't know what the legal landscape is like abroad, or didn't when you did or where perceived to have done whatever it is that you're summoned for) and in any case the summons may just be a trap to arrest you and lock you up. And considering that the general air over here is that Brein has bought the courts and politicians I don't think the Pirates' chances were that high even if they had shown up.