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Judge Rules Takedown of Pirate Party General Proxy Illegal
CAPSLOCK2000 writes "The Dutch Pirate Party (PPNL) just won a court-case against BREIN. Last week BREIN got a court to issue an emergency order to take down a reverse-proxy to The Pirate Bay. The next day BREIN claimed the court order also included a generic proxy also ran by PPNL and any other service that might lead to TPB (aka hyperlinks). PPNL responded with an emergency lawsuit of their own, asking for a literal interpretation of the verdict instead of BREIN's broad reading. The judge acknowledged the narrow interpretation of the verdict. proxy.piratenpartij.nl stays up and tpb.piratenpartij.nl now sports a list of other ways to reach The Pirate Bay. Due to the Streisand effect this list has grown to a considerable length. Noteworthy is that The Pirate Party got favorable verdict in a single day, a first in Dutch law."
Full verdict (in Dutch). This is only a temporary order by the judge to keep the general-purpose proxy run by the Pirate Party and the list of alternative proxies to the Pirate Bay online. A full case hearing is expected on April 24th.
I think it is enough to say, "Good."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Clearly the anti-piracy outfits have no respect for the law; perhaps people should start doing what they can to quit funding them.
The Netherlands is an important battleground, because 1) the Dutch are strong believers in individual freedoms and rights, and 2) because what happens in the courts in the Netherlands may affect what happens in other EU Zone courts. The Dutch are usually very liberal/libertarian in their political outlook. Its unlikely that the Dutch Public would ever back the Copyright/IP Lobby politically. Dutch Politicians/Bureaucrats, and perhaps also Dutch Courts, sadly, may be a different beast. The "Legal Right to Protect Intellectual Property" may win over the politicos/bureaucrats/judges. Its going to be interesting to see which way this court battle ultimately swings, and how the Dutch Public will react to the results. I personally can't see the Dutch Public backing the IP lobbyists at all. The country is too freedom-loving by nature for the IP Lobbyists to be able to make much of a dent, politically speaking.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
It may be more accurate to say they won this battle, but the war is not over yet.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
If generic proxies are considered illegal, what's the next step? Outlawing Tor? Clearly shows that there is no middle ground between free speech and full censorship on the net: if you wan't to effectively censor a content, you have to become an authoritarian power yourself.
"the land of the free and the home of the brave" we really mean, the Netherlands, right? i mean first the anders attack which by all indications the entire populous outright refused to be intimidated by at all. Now we have the government recognizing a body of highly controversial individuals and their right to remain independently available on the internet, despite what i can only imagine is some very overt pressure from the United States State Department and its notorious foreign cables.
in stark contrast as an american, i actually feel ashamed to stand up for the national anthem. secret prisons, targeted killings, Immigrations and customs randomly kicking websites off the internet they dont like. We should probably pack in the statue of liberty at this point too; the half-million undocumented immigrants that serve as our permanent slave-class certainly havent benefitted as tired huddled masses.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Now see there's the problem. That won't help you. These organisations have been able to buy laws that in a lot of countries demand you pay them even if you are not listed with any of their organisations and wrote the music yourself. It's the corruption that's involved with these companies not just music that's the issue.
Gnash and roar loudly as they sink into the tar pits.
They may hurt teh interwebs on their way down, but their efforts are futile; culture will never again be produced by the few and consumed only by everyone else.
(BTW, Lessig has a great Ted Talk about how everyone is a content producer now.)
Perhaps the MAFIAA think they can turn back the clock because they suffer from Dunning-Kruger? Either way, they need to die and die soon so the rest of us can get on with making badass remixes and fanfic.
Yeah, right.
No kidding. It was impossible for our band to get some demo CDs pressed without paying BUMA/STEMRA (Dutch MAFIAA) rights, even though they were our own works and the CDs weren't commercial. We were told that we could claim when the CDs were sold - which we never did because they were free demos. Even if we would have sold them, there was no way we could get any money back because we wouldn't have reached the threshold. So basically, smaller bands are paying for the MAFIAA and the bigger artists. I say, screw them in every way you can.