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Dutch Court Forces ISPs To Block the Pirate Bay

Posted by Unknown on from the censorship-is-hip dept.

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."

10 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Et tu, Netherlands? by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And from a country where a man once gave his life for freedom of speech, no less.

    They once fought the Nazi's, but now they drop to their knees before the entertainment industry.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Funny

      Invoking Godwin's Law in the first post is worse than anything that Hitler ever did.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    2. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by Baloroth · · Score: 5, Informative

      BREIN isn't a US organization. Note how it is representing Dutch movie and recording studios? Nor is there any sign they need the US to encourage them. Believe it or not, the US is not the only source of corporate greed or stupidity in the world, despite what many Slashdot commentators seem to think.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
    4. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Never. No more so than google has been violating copyrights by indexing.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    5. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by kdemetter · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Blocking The Pirate Bay, is also suppressing freedom of speech. There's a blog on it, for example.
      Someone could also use it too hosts it's own creations, and ask feedback on it trough the comments.
      And it could be used to host content criticizing a regime, controversial opinions , etc...

      The Pirate Bay does advocate free speech, though obviously they see it broader ( freedom of information ).

      So any country blocking TPB , is fighting piracy ( though very unsuccessfully ) , and is suppressing freedom of speech at the same time.
      Any file sharer will find a way to work around it, so this does nothing to stop piracy. Torrents and magnet links remain accessible.

      However, actual free speech, like the opinions of users, blog entries, are now inaccessible to the user just wants to visit the site .
      So it does a lot more harm to free speech, then that it does anything against piracy.

      --
      Slipping shoelaces ?
    6. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by shaitand · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Et tu, Netherlands? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm from the Netherlands, and a volunteer of BitsofFreedom.

      We've been quite sucesfull in being a counterweight to the lobby organisations in parlement (downloading is still legal in the Netherlands, and we've just passed Network Neutrality), but this is quite a setback.

      The battle rages on..

  2. Right to submit future domains, but by DCTech · · Score: 5, Informative

    The verdict also said that if they submit non-TPB domains or ip's and violate that court decision, they will be legally liable.

  3. Et tu, Netherlands part 2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Dutch ISP XS4ALL just decided to appeal again. They might win since BREIN based their offence on some very (VERY) poorly done statistics.