TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark
- The Pirate Bay Faces UK ISP Block After High Court Ruling
- Pirate Bay ISP Block Challenged For Censoring Lawful Content
| Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark Posted: 21 Feb 2012 04:48 AM PST
RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund said that Grooveshark had no content agreements or licenses with members of her group, accused the service of being “completely uncooperative" in negotiations, and that effectively taking down content from Grooveshark had proven impossible. The resulting legal action was directed “randomly” at telecoms company ’3′ with a complaint that the ISP’s customers breach copyright and as their supplier they are contributing to infringements. ’3′ argued that not all content on Grooveshark is offered without permission since artists and labels legally upload and distribute their music via the service. If the court did indeed order an injunction its effects would be disproportionate and result in the censorship of legal content, ’3′ argued. However, the court said that even though certain aspects of the Grooveshark service may be considered legal, the extent of the copyright violations being committed using the service overwhelmed them. The Bailiff Court said that ’3′ was unlikely to suffer any financial losses as the result of an injunction and since ’3′ customers are violating copyright law when they stream music from Grooveshark, they would not be able to claim compensation from ’3′ when they could no longer access the site. Based on the Danish implementation of the Infosoc Directive, the court ordered an immediate injunction against ’3′ which prohibits it from facilitating subscriber access to Grooveshark. “Grooveshark is an illegal site, which is really big and popular. But they have a business model that is based on trickery and fraud,” said RettighedsAlliancen chief Maria Fredenslund commenting on the news. “Many users believe that when they use Grooveshark payment goes back to the artists and producers. So we think it was important to close off access so the legitimate sites have a chance to recover,” Fredenslund added. But Troels Møller, co-founder of internet think-tank Bitbureauet, says blocking access to Grooveshark is a step too far. “This is an attack on free speech and basic Internet freedom. Danish politicians need to educate themselves on this subject, and realize that what is going on is very dangerous. It’s a slippery-slope into complete internet censorship,” he told TorrentFreak. “In Denmark we are seeing this kind of censorship in more and more areas. It has expanded from blocking child abuse-sites to also blocking file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, and again to foreign pharmacy and gambling sites. And now we see blocking of music streaming sites without the proper license. What’s next?” In the meantime, ’3′ are planning their next move “We have received the result and will now decide what to do next,” Stinne Green Paulsen, Communications Manager at ’3′, told TorrentFreak. “We have four weeks to decide if we want to proceed or not.” Proceeding would mean ’3′ taking the case to the High Court, but whatever the decision in the meantime the injunction will stand. In addition to Grooveshark, other sites that have been blocked in Denmark on copyright infringement grounds include AllofMP3 and more recently The Pirate Bay. RettighedsAlliancen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Source: Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark
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| The Pirate Bay Faces UK ISP Block After High Court Ruling Posted: 20 Feb 2012 11:34 AM PST
Predictions pointing towards The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent site, were spot on. This time Hollywood would step aside and leave it to the recording industry to obtain an injunction which would force ISPs to block the infamous torrent site. Nine labels including EMI , Polydor, Sony, Virgin and Warner, say that The Pirate Bay infringes their copyrights and that several ISPs including BSkyB, BT, TalkTalk, Telefonica and Virgin Media, should implement a blockade under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Section 97A of the Act gives courts the power to order an injunction against an ISP if it can be proven that it had knowledge that its services were being used to infringe copyright. In the High Court today Mr Justice Arnold drew parallels with the Newzbin2 case but actually went further by stating that the case against The Pirate Bay and its users was actually somewhat stronger. He said that the operators of TPB have the power to prevent copyright infringement and noted that the site is prepared to remove torrents if they are mislabeled, child porn, malware or spam. “As a matter of policy, however, the rights of copyright owners are excluded from the criteria by which the operators of TPB choose to exercise this power,” he said, noting that the site’s owners had treated previous rulings against them with contempt. “Indeed, according to a statement on the website, the reason for its recent adoption of Magnet links as the default option is that ‘it’s not as easy to block as .torrent files’. This confirms the operators’ determination to do whatever they can to provide users with unrestricted access to torrent files and thereby enable the users to continue to infringe,” Justice Arnold noted. “In my judgment, the operators of TPB do authorize its users’ infringing acts of copying and communication to the public. They go far beyond merely enabling or assisting. On any view, they ‘sanction, approve and countenance’ the infringements of copyright committed by its users. But in my view they also purport to grant users the right to do the acts complained of. “It is no defense that they openly defy the rights of the copyright owners. I would add that I consider the present case to be indistinguishable from 20C Fox v Newzbin in this respect. If anything, it is a stronger case,” he concluded. According to Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, today’s ruling is a clear indication that The Pirate Bay operates illegally. “The ruling helps clarify the law on website blocking and we will now proceed with our application to have the site blocked to protect the UK’s creative industries from further harm,” Taylor said. If things go smoothly for the labels, a nationwide blockade of The Pirate Bay could be in place in a matter of months. We’ll update this post later today with comment from the site’s operators. Source: The Pirate Bay Faces UK ISP Block After High Court Ruling
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| Pirate Bay ISP Block Challenged For Censoring Lawful Content Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:11 AM PST
The groups demanded that local ISP Elisa should start blocking The Pirate Bay in order to protect the copyrights of their members. While Elisa initially refused, a subsequent court order in October 2011 forced them to comply and last month it was initiated. The matter is currently under appeal but in the meantime Elisa’s block must remain, which means that no content indexed by The Pirate Bay – illicit or fully authorized – is available to the ISP’s customers. For one Elisa customer, that situation is unacceptable. Antti Laine says that the enforcement order handed down to his ISP was unlawful so he has responded by filing a complaint with the authority that sanctioned the block. His complaint states that under Finnish copyright law, any injunction should avoid collateral damage. Such a wide block fails to consider this responsibility, Laine insists, adding that “enforcement of the decision is based on an erroneous application of law.” His complaint is being made on three grounds. 1. Laine says he has been working on a project and the media created is being distributed via The Pirate Bay. Due to the block, distribution of the content is being affected. 2. As a client of Elisa himself, Laine says that due to the blockade he can no longer download or indeed upload any material that is deemed by creators to be for free distribution. Under copyright law this legal content cannot be a target of the injunction but nevertheless its availability is being threatened. 3. Laine states that the injunction is based on an incorrect application of the law. Service providers can only be ordered to block access to infringing files, but the are huge numbers of other works being affected by the blanket censorship. Furthermore, Laine says that the blockade also affects all legal content uploaded to The Pirate Bay after it was initiated and such preemptive censorship is against Finland’s constitution. In respect of item 3, Laine attached a list of Creative Commons, GPL and Public Domain material affected including content from Dope Stars Inc, titles such as Steal This Film, LionShare and Zeitgeist from Jamie King’s VODO, Rip: A Remix Manifesto, Finland’s own Star Trek parody series Star Wreck and many open source software applications. “No blocking mechanism should block content that’s available legally,” Joonas Mäkinen of Finland's Pirate Party tells TorrentFreak. “If the proposed methods can’t reasonably differentiate between authorized and non-authorized content, they should never be put in action.” “There is no reason to block even The Pirate Bay’s website itself, as the texts and images there – a whopping 90 megabytes – are definitely not in illegal distribution per se,” Mäkinen adds. Laine seeks a correction of the existing injunction so that it no longer breaches the Copyright Act and Constitutional Law. Source: Pirate Bay ISP Block Challenged For Censoring Lawful Content
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Last year, a group of entertainment companies known collectively as RettighedsAlliancen sent a 
After the MPA won its blocking case against the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site last year, it became clear that the entertainment industries would seek further injunctions against similar sites.
During May 2011, the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) and the Finnish branch of the music industry group IFPI filed a lawsuit at the District Court of Helsinki.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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