Dutch Pirate Party Dragging BREIN To Court

An anonymous reader writes "Last week the Dutch Pirate Party refused to take down their proxy. Then, avoiding the Pirate Party in court, the entertainment industry organization BREIN obtained an injunction against the party's The Pirate Bay proxy (now a list of alternative proxies). After receiving additional demands from BREIN on Saturday night, including one to censor their generic proxy, the Dutch Pirate Party decided to take them to court, to strike the order and convince the judge of the need for due process and the freedom to inform." From the press release: "The penalties imposed by the court are 4 times higher than those ordered upon the large commercial ISPs XS4ALL and Ziggo..."

Comments

It's the 80s all over again

[Opportunist]

The older geeks here might remember. Back in the 80s, our politicians didn't give half a shit about environment. The forest died, they ignored it. People protested, they ignored it. All because the industry was fearmongering that any environmental laws would threaten "Germany as an industry location". The sky was falling, companies were supposed to leave Germany in droves if laws were passed that dared to order filters for the pests they pumped into our environment.

And behold, a party came into existence that had very few agendas safe one: Environment. And the second time they stood in elections, they gained a few seats in the parliament. And it grew because the established parties continued to ignore the issue. And what a joke that party was! People who didn't have a clue about politics, or so it seemed, they came in jeans instead of suits and didn't know how to "behave". And the longer they were ignored, the bigger the party got.

30 years later the Greens are an established force in pretty much every parliament in Europe. In some countries they are or were already part of the government. The "big players" now have to deal with another party that siphons votes away from them, and as much as they'd love to, they can't really get rid of them anymore. The Greens became part of the political landscape in Europe.

History repeats itself now. The issue now is privacy instead of environment, but the cards are played exactly the same way. Privacy is eliminated and ignored by the established parties, despite protests, citing the threat of losing jobs in the entertainment industry if we don't eliminate freedom and the right to privacy. People don't like that, or even oppose it to the extreme. And a party is formed that you actually know very little of besides one thing: It opposes this.

And if the established parties continue to ignore what people actually want from them, they'll soon have to deal with yet another party sitting around in parliament cutting into their share of the cake. I cannot help but wish for history to repeat itself.