Tag: court

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End User piracy

Pirate Bay now, what next?

Pirate Bay to be blocked in the UKI’ve just been on the Pirate Bay website. It looks decidedly dodgy. Ads for pornography and flashing boxes inviting you to “fix it now”. Not been on it before. Thought I’d do so before the court order kicks in.

Today a court told the biggest consumer ISPs to block access for their customers to the Pirate Bay website. Most ISPs are not affected by the order but now most consumers in the UK wanting to access the “services” provided by Pirate Bay will have to do so using encrypted paths provided by proxy servers or by accessing a mirror of the Pirate Bay site.

There is a twitter account specifically set up to provide updates of where you can find mirrors. They don’t

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Categories
Business Regs surveillance & privacy

Newsbin2 court ruling means BT has to ask permission to perform maintenance on network

The High Court this morning ruled that BT would have to block Newzbin2 within 14 days and pay its own costs.  The ruling can be read here.

It’s an interesting read and seems to run roughshod over BT – there seem to be no guarantees that the same order would be made against other ISPs which puts BT at a competitive disadvantage.

Seems crazy, but BT also now needs to seek authorisation from the movie studios when it wants to perform maintenance on their Cleanfeed filtering system, if the studios don’t reply quickly, then BT can apply to the courts to be allowed to do this – extract from the ruling below:

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Business piracy Regs surveillance & privacy

Top EU judge says web blocking to prevent copyright infringement infringes fundamental human rights #deappg #deact @edvaizey

The Court of Justice of the European Union yesterday issued a press release stating that “According to Advocate General Cruz Villalón, a measure ordering an internet service provider to install a system for filtering and blocking electronic communications in order to protect intellectual property rights in principle infringes fundamental rights.”

In other words web blocking to try and prevent unlawful P2P downloading is wrong.

“Advocate General Cruz Villalón considers that the installation of that filtering and blocking system is a restriction on the right to respect for the privacy of communications and the right to protection of personal data, both of which are rights protected under the Charter of Fundamental Rights. By the same token, the deployment of such a system would restrict freedom of information, which is also protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

This is an independent legal opinion and not a court judgement but I understand that the court normally adheres to the Advocate General’s line. This particular opinion is issued in relation to the Scarlet Sabam case which involves copyright infringement. In my mind this should also extend to other areas where calls have been made to introduce web blocking such as porn.

It will be interesting to see the reaction to this opinion in the UK. Communications minister Ed Vaizey has been in the press recently with his controversial initiative to see whether ISPs and RightsHolders would be able to find an acceptable way of blocking access to sites promoting P2P file sharing and copyright infringement.