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Dutch Court Forces ISPs To Block the Pirate Bay
New submitter swinferno writes "After recent successes in Finland, Italy and Belgium, the Dutch Copyright protection organization BREIN has obtained a verdict that forces two major ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay domains and gives them the right to submit future domains/IP addresses to be blocked in the future without court order."
What a farce. The Pirate Bay isn't fighting for freedom of speech, nor are the Dutch suppressing it. Copyright violation isn't free speech, no matter how you want to dress it up as such.
Since when has been TPB violating copyrights?
Ezekiel 23:20
Never. No more so than google has been violating copyrights by indexing.
Om, nomnomnom...
If lower statutes trump free speech then it would have been illegal for Dr. Martin Luther King to discuss the organized civil disobedience in the civil rights movement. His speech clearly helped facilitate and encourage this activity in the same way the pirate bay encourages and facilitates civil disobedience in the form of piracy.
I think you'll likely find the only difference between the two is that you agree with Dr. King's agenda and do not agree with that of the pirate bay and the pirate party. Free speech is guaranteed constitutionally in the highest law of the land because its most important uses will often encourage the violation of lesser laws thought to be unjust or the result of government corruption.
At least this is the case here in the US even if free speech and the constitution hasn't always been honored here in practice. I don't know about the Netherlands. And yes, it is not a coincidence that the dutch branch of the RIAA/MPAA is taking the same action as the finish and other EU branches. These groups are affiliated and the ringleader is the US branch.