Pirate Bay Legal Action Dropped In Norway

superapecommando writes "Copyright holders have given up legal efforts to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to block filesharing site The Pirate Bay, one of the parties to the case said. The copyright holders, led by Norway's performing rights society TONO and by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Norway (IFPI Norge), have lost two rounds in the Norwegian court system, and have now decided against appealing the case to Norway's supreme court."

Comments

Re:Aren't they still facing jail time?

[Zironic]

This is a completely different legal action in an entirely different country. This case was about forcing an ISP to block access to the site.

Pirate Bay appeals likely to start in September

[angry tapir]

In other Pirate Bay-related news: "The case against the four people involved in the running of Pirate Bay is heading back to court at the end of September. The appeals trial is tentatively scheduled to start on Sep 28., the Svea Court of Appeals said on Wednesday."

Re:All that means...

[C4st13v4n14]

The reason why they keep losing in court is because of strong privacy laws in Norway. In order to sue anyone for downloading copyrighted material, it would require the ISPs to identify users by IP addresses, something which is a very big no-no here.

We also have an automatic toll system set up in a few places (on highways entering cities, for example) to automatically scan cars' number (license) plates and send bills to the car owners. This information is deleted as soon as the bills are paid and cannot be used by law enforcement. There are also speed cameras all over that take photos of the driver and automatically blur out the passengers. If you get a ticket as the car owner and you were not driving the car, then you don't have to pay it. My wife drives my car and I driver hers, which completely eliminates these sort of fines. Some people drive with burkas and sunglasses! Motorcyclists cannot get fines as they wear helmets. It's quite an interesting system.

Anyway, this topic has been slashdotted several times already, most recently here.

Re:All that means...

[Kjella]

This is one of those times where I really like wikipedia:
Supranational European Bodies

Norway is the red, white and blue flag that is part of EEA, EFTA and the Schengen area. It's our participation in the EEA which means that we must implement EU directives, to be part of the "inner market" there must be equal market conditions in all countries - a clause interpreted at least as wide as "interstate commerce" in the US constitution. Technically we have a reservation right, but we've never used it. As you can see, there's only two countries left in our bubble, and the other is Iceland that is tiny to begin with, has mostly financially collapsed and is now applying for EU membership. The initial agreement (1994) was good but since the renegotiation in 2004 we gain nothing by standing on the outside. The EU decides, and Norway follows willingly or unwillingly and there's no economic incentive either, we pay the same as if we were EU members.