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Dutch ISPs Refuse To Block Pirate Bay
judgecorp writes "Two Dutch ISPs have complied with a demand to block the Pirate Bay, but KPN and T-Mobile are refusing to block the site."
Torrent Freak has a bit more info. T-Mobile at least seems to imply they would respond to a court order, and are merely refusing to take down sites at the request of a private entity.
I would sooner live in a world where blockbuster films were uneconomical to produce, and therefore simply didn't exist, than one where the internet miracle is smothered.
Die big content. Die.
No...
the 2 other ISP received court orders to do so.
Please read the article next time..
That about sum it up?
Not really, no. If you read the article (or even the summary) you'll see it is related to Dutch ISPs and that it's BREIN that is the anti-piracy group making the demand. Also that the ISPs you've categorized as fearing the MPAA, RIAA and BSA (which are all American?) were in fact taken to court by BREIN, the court then ruled that they had to block access.
Not sure how you got modded insightful, it's not even close to correct.
I would like to personally apologize on behalf of my country, its legislators, and its judicial system. Frankly, I am embarrassed. Additionally, I have canceled my xs4all subscription. Xs4all - ironically known for holding the privacy and freedoms of its users in high regard - complied with this nonsensical court order and has since blocked thepiratebay.org.
I'm not quite sure what's happening with this country (and I suppose the rest of the world as well), but I know it's not good.
What!? Read the ****ing article?!
This is slashdot! We *never* read the article before posting!
Ok, humor aside, the 3 orgs I listed have more fingers in foriegn pies than hentai monsters have tentacles.
Those 3 orgs play the tune that the other crony orgs dance to. I would be flabbergasted if they didn't have their tentacles rammed to the hilt and squirming hard inside on this proceeding. The degree of overlap and collusion between the american orgs, and the localized foreign ones is so great it makes very little sense to segregate them without becoming pedantic.
The article is misleading. The two ISP's that have complied have done so because of a court order, not because of their own choosing, which is explained in the referred article. BREIN (the Dutch RIAA) sued the first two ISP's and the court ordered them to block The Pirate Bay. Now that the court ruled in their favour, they have written letters to the other large ISP's in The Netherlands (KPN, T-Mobile and UPC) to also block The Pirate Bay. Those ISP's now refused, just like the first two, Ziggo and XS4ALL, too to block The Pirate Bay without a court order. Now it'll be a wait how that trial ends.
You forced me to post an American != World comment :(
The term common carrier is a common law term, which is seldom used in continental Europe because it has no exact equivalent in civil-law systems.
The dumb pipes argument is based on an American law. The 'telecommunications act of 1996' or whatever.
In short, no this doesn't about sum it up.
My own ISP Ziggo fought a courtcase with XS4ALL and lost. KPN is the owner of XS4ALL but they operate independtly. KPN and T-Mobile only got a request from Brein (Brain, although in dutch it is more the word for thought process then the lump of meat) and KPN basically said, after some deliberation and back-tracking that they wouldn't respond to a voluntary request.
KPN and T-Mobile are by now means heroes but have realized that doing such a thing without a court order is opening a can of worms. KPN is the formers monopolist goverment landline company, so they have experience with common carrier dillema's and are a bit to big to be easily intimidated. Go ahead, sue KPN, they will see you in court for the next century. Not because they are nice but simply because they know their business.
Ziggo currently has a page up explaining they have to comply for now with the order but are fighting it.
This is a real dillema in Holland, it was one of the countries that fought to get a Freedom on the Internet thing going and donated a large sum of money to it, just as this story breaks. The current government really doesn't need this right now as a right wing government is being beaten in the polls by a very left wing party who is now according to some, the largest party if elections were to be held. And this is not Labour left wing, this is real hardcore left, left of even UNIONS! *sound of American readers crapping their pants*
Nobody right now wants to be associated with Brein restricting the peoples access to their bread and circusses. The SP (the upcoming protest party) is against the ending of the tax on blank CD's that goes to artists. You might think this is a bad thing but the tax is fairly light. It is the content industry that wants it torn down IN exchange for removing the right to download and make personal copies etc etc. The SP is saying, "no, we keep the low tax on an outdated format and won't make any changes to the copyright laws in Holland until the content industry chances". And these guys are winning right now, oh not just on these policies but the old parties hardly want to give them even more ammo to fight on.
Mostly right now the situation is that Brein is making everyone in power extremely uncomfortable. It doesn't help their case that a famous dutch singer supposedly went bankrupt (awh, poor artists) and then it was found he had millions stashed away through tax freud... doesn't help the image of the struggling artist. The right wing government one success story with the middle class is the cutting of benefits to artists, the starving artist angle of Brein isn't being swallowed anymore by anyone. The right hates them for living on handouts and the left hates them for wanting to restrict freedoms to feed the rich... caught between a rock and a hard place.
The piratebay story has been playing for a long time and this is by no means the end of it. For now, the politicians have tried to ignore it but the problem with that is that it keeps getting bigger and bigger... all it needs is the right story of a minister promoting freedom on the internet and the link to said minister doing nothing to stop said freedom in his own country when there isn't a soccer match on TV.
Stay tuned for further developments.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wait - Slashdot actually managed to post something before it happens? The world really must be ending in 2012!
Two ISPs got a court order to block. One of these, xs4all, is actually part of the KPN holding. T-mobile is not a major player on the dutch consumer market. KPN under it's own name is quite big. Surprising pretty much everyone UPC, which is really big on the cable internet market, has also stated that it will not block without a court order. All of these will block when they get a court order to do so
You could be American. Then you'd constantly have to apologize for the RIAA and the MPAA. At least brein doesn't sue individual downloaders for 10k per song
T-Mobile said they would do it if they got a court order... Of course they're not going to block it because a private entity told them to do it.
BREIN took some (small) ISPs to court to get blocking orders, and won. These ISPs have, reluctantly, implemented blocking.
Then they said: "Don't make us go to court to get orders for each and every one of you [ISPs]; because we will, and we will win, and you will lose money fighting us, and then have to block anyway, and we will hate you."
And nobody blinked. They said: "Sure; go and get court orders for each and every one of us. Because until you do, we're not doing anything you say. We have oodles of money and, thanks to people like you, we're in court and paying lawyers all the time anyway. One more lawsuit isn't a big deal, and it's better than the alternative."
And BREIN is basically going "Waaaah! We don't want to have to get orders for every single one of you, every single time! That's almost as much of a pain as suing every person who uploads! We want you to voluntarily do it! Why aren't you scared of us?"
BREIN are also trying to imply that just because they (have proved that they) can get a court order, that this implies that all ISPs are a priori required to comply, and waiting until they have a court order against them is somehow an abuse of the spirit of the law(!)
In Don Lafontaine's voice:
In a world where blockbuster films are so uneconomical to produce, the simply don't exist...
[close-up of unshaven DiCaprio taking a swig of Everclear]
A world where the internet miracle is not smothered...
[cut to LAN party with a bunch of stereotypical geeks]
Set your phasers on "funky"!
You just described Freenet. But it isn't suited for highly dynamic sites like TBP - once an update is submitted, it take hours before the whole network is aware of it.
TPB has moved from torrent files to magnet links now. Magnet links are even smaller.
Why can't we build something like Bittorrent, but for Web pages? You browse to http://thepiratebay.org/ and you download pieces from scattered machines around the globe. No way to stop that. Luckily torrent files are small, and once you download the torrent file through a proxy ... even a slow one ... you're in business.
They already built something like this. It's called Freenet. Completely encrypted and the end user has the benefit of being able to say they have no idea what they are storing on their hard drive or serving to others. You can create a Freenet page and be the only one able to modify it, with the added benefit that it will geographically disperse itself according to demand.
Check it out.
Nope, it doesn't sum it up.
The 2 providers who will block were ordered by a court to do so.
The blocking providers are XS4All and Ziggo and they already appealed the ruling, but they still have to implement the block in the meantime.
The other providers were not mentioned in the court order and so they decide not to implement the block unless ordered by court...
T-Mobile is a daughter of T-Com which is a German company.
We had a Minister (google: "Zensursula") here trying to pull a similar stunt with pedophilia instead of piracy. She was also aiming for bypassing due process.
They took her back into reality the hard way and she hasn't been seen much on TV since then.
BREIN (dutch RIAA) has been given carte blanche by the judge on submitting extra IPs and domain names that should be blocked by Ziggo and XS4ALL. No limits on how long they get it, or how many. This means that they get to veto every website and computer on the planet without an independent judge to verify their request. This is one of the reasons why the other ISPs are fighting this so adamantly. It's censorship by a private entity without any control whatsoever.
The other providers were not mentioned in the court order and so they decide not to implement the block unless ordered by court...
Well, at least they will way to see how the appeal works out before they start blocking anything. There's a fair change this ruling is reversed in the appeal in which case implementing a block right now is simply a waste of time for the other providers. But if the order sticks in the appeal I expect other providers to implement the block as well. If they don't they will be sued and loose as well, there's no point in going to court when there is clear jurisprudence.
FTFA:
Ziggo and XS4ALL, meanwhile, are expected to enforce the blockade this coming Wednesday, February 1st.
They may not have just yet but it appears they will.
As a Ziggo customer I can confirm they have implemented the blockade.
They have also put up a website with a small FAQ. which includes as one of the questions
(Translated from Dutch):
Q: Can the blockade be circumvented ?
A: Yes, the blockade of The Pirate Bay can be easily circumvented.
Yeah, that second scene is sure to not only kill ticket sales for that movie, it's going to cause people seeing the movie airing after the trailer you mention to run out of the theatre screaming.
Here's the Slashdot-focus-group version:
A world where the internet miracle is not smothered...
[cut to LAN party where life-size action figures of Natalie Portman / Kelly LeBrock / $HOTGIRL are being produced using 3-D printers]
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Avatar put me off all 3D films. Watch Thor on a plane with no 3D and all the huge panning shots are a pain to watch. :)
I'll go watch the hobbit in 2d and at the end of its run so I can watch in a 1/2 full room. When my house renovations are done I intend to have a decent projector setup and I'll never watch a film in the cinema again. I'm thinking about installing a DVD standard low definition system and spend the rest on beer. Who needs HD when you're blind drunk?
Because obviously none of the Wikileaks documents offered clear evidence of US involvement in the Spanish download laws? Shill.
What a depressingly stupid machine.