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.

Comments

Is there more to say?

[KGIII]

I think it is enough to say, "Good."

Re:Is there more to say?

[Spad]

Oh I agree, but for the time being we just have to put up with BREIN.

Re:Is there more to say?

[i kan reed]

How about we hold people liable when we discover they actually violate a particular copyright, rather than trying to extent tort coverage to criminal concepts like "aiding and abetting". Seriously.

Re:Is there more to say?

[AngryDeuce]

Of all the times to be out of mod points...

The world will be a better place when the MAFIAA is gone. They're a relic from a time when an artist required a middleman to get their art to the masses, and internet has made them largely unnecessary.

I have as much sympathy for them as the first automobile owners had for the harrier. It's progress, baby...

Piracy is fast becoming a civic duty

[mykos]

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 important because...

[dryriver]

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.

Re:The Netherlands is important because...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) the Dutch are strong believers in individual freedoms and rights

Same with the USA.

You think so? TSA, Guantanamo, over a decade of poorly-justified wars, attempts to stigmatize abortion through law, the steady lowering of the maximum legal BAC, the so-called "war on drugs", the extremely large prison population including the rise of a for-profit industry with the purpose of imprisoning minors, metal detectors in schools, the rise of the surveillance state, the growing wealth imbalance aided by law, on and on... we claim to love individual rights, but I would not want to have to defend our actions of the last decade or so in a court of my peers. It would be easy to defend the statements that the US loves business and the US loves money, though; I think freedom is in third place here, at best.

Re:Legality of generic proxies

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Allready happening. A few weeks ago the Dutch media were portraying TOR as the new Sodom & Gomorra of the Internet. Questions have been asked in parliament about blocking TOR. Ofcourse the media only focus on the downsides of having a truly anonymous network and not on the reasons of building such a network in the first place.

Re:so when we say

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway is the capital of the Netherlands, silly.

Re:Not piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Dinosaurs

[Safety Cap]

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.

Re:Not piracy

[MisterMidi]

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.