Pirate Bay Block Lifted In the Netherlands

swinferno writes "The Dutch ISPs Ziggo and XS4all are no longer required to block access to the websites of The Pirate Bay. [Original in Dutch; here's Google's translation.] This has been decided by the court in The Hague. The blockade has proven to be ineffective. The Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN will have to reimburse legal costs of €326,000. The internet provider XS4ALL has already started lifting the ban. The website of The Pirate Bay was ordered to be blocked by the two major ISPs in January 2012. Recent studies by Amsterdam University and CentERdata showed that this did not reduce the number of downloads from illegal sources. Many people circumvented the blockade."

Comments

Recent studies

[Thanshin]

Recent studies by Amsterdam University and CentERdata.showed that this did not reduce the number of downloads from illegal sources.

It must be sad to make studies about the obvious.

You go have a beer with friends and they ask you "hey! What are you studying now?"

"I''ve proven that blocking thepiratebay doesn't reduce the number of illegal downloads", you say low voice while fiddling with the peanuts.

And then they look at you as if you were retarded.

Re:Recent studies

[SecurityTheatre]

On the other hand, I commend lawmakers and Judges for looking at the data and making a rational decision.

In many places, the politicians enter the discussion with an idea of how things work. Most of the time, they simply refuse to change their mind, damn the evidence.

I tip my hat to the Dutch judges or politicians who reserve judgement, wait for a peer-reviewed or statistically rigorous assessment from an independent body, and then make a reasonable decision from that.

Just because YOU feel it is obvious, obviously many people don't. Good data is the most appropriate counter to ignorant assumptions.

Re:Recent studies

[Shalaska]

Exactly, in most cases piracy is a indication of a service problem. It is amazing the number of times I have and have seen others have to pirate a game I already own, just because the DRM-copy fails to function as advertised due to draconian DRM restrictions. Furthermore the pirated copy doesn't require things such as disks in the CD drive which I would rather not have to look for. On the other hand all of the games I have gotten off of Steam, although using Steam's DRM system, I have not had to pirate because their system just works for me.

Whenever a pirated copy is better then the legal copy, there is something wrong with the legal copy.

Intersting

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pretty interesting decision.

Regardless of what one thinks about copyright, forcing someone to do something ineffective to prevent it is just a waste of resources. Even if it is effective if the cost is greater than the benefit it could be questionable.
It seems that it would be reasonable that the copyright holder pays the cost to enforce the copyright, otherwise an entitled copyright holder might request that even symbolic measures should be taken at completely unreasonable costs

Re:Intersting

[houstonbofh]

It seems that it would be reasonable that the copyright holder pays the cost to enforce the copyright, otherwise an entitled copyright holder might request that even symbolic measures should be taken at completely unreasonable costs

Now if someone can just do this with spurrious takedown requests. When there is no cost to it, there is no reason to stop.

Re:326 euros?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from the US and I had no problem reading it. Thanks for contributing to the perception of the dumb American.