Last week’s landmark ruling compelling a Swedish ISP to block The Pirate Bay won’t spread quickly, despite copyright holders’ wishes. Telecoms giant Telia says that the ruling does not apply to them, so connectivity to the site will continue unless a court orders otherwise. Copyright holders are assessing their options.
Torrentfreak » “We Won’t Block Pirate Bay,” Swedish Telecoms Giant Says »
A new study from Sweden has found that just over half of all young people admit to obtaining movies and TV shows from the Internet without paying, a figure that rockets to 70% among young men. With The Pirate Bay about to be blocked by one ISP with more to follow, can piracy rates be controlled?
TorrentFreak » Study: 70% of Young Swedish Men Are Video Pirates »
Poorly crafted court orders threaten the open Internet, Cloudflare says. (…)
“This is part of the danger you get into when you start to censor the Internet or you get orders to pull things down,” Kramer said. “It may not be so easy to limit access to a specific domain,” or to make sure a block applies only in a certain country.
Ars Technica: A court order blocked pirate sites that weren’t supposed to be blocked »
TorrentFreak: Cloudflare Puts Pirate Sites on New IP Addresses, Avoids Cogent Blockade »
Opponents of the plan, including some small web publishers, worry it could choke traffic to their sites by creating a thicket of regulations that will dissuade Google and other platforms from driving users to them. These critics also argue that a publisher’s right will create a “link tax” (a phrase that supporters liken to a slur) but won’t achieve its backers’ main aim: to save the news sector’s broken business model. (…)
Comodini Cachia will present a report next month, including suggested amendments to the proposal, but it’s unclear whether the hard protections demanded by the publishers will survive.
Politico.eu: Plan to make Google pay for news hits rocks »
A Swedish appeals court (the court for market and patent related issues) today ruled that the Internet service provider Bredbandsbolaget must block the Pirate Bay and the streaming service Swefilmer.
By definition, this is censorship.
Also, it is a ruling in direct conflict with the EU the eCommerce-directives principle of »mere conduit« stating that net operators can not be held liable for what users are doing in their cables.
However, this is in line with court rulings in other European countries. And the court claims that the decision is based on EU law.
To confuse things further, the ISP has not been subject to any criminal charges or accusations of illegal activities. Nevertheless, the court seems to refer to a general »responsibilty« to stem illegal activities.
Where all of this leave the »mere conduit« principle (in the EU eCommerce directive) is unclear. Apparently, there are two conflicting sets of rules.
To abolish »mere conduit« is like holding the Post Office responsible for what is written and sent by mail. Or to hold road operators responsible for the intentions and actions of people traveling in cars using their infrastructure.
This is not reasonable. The ruling will open up for more censorship and surveillance.
And to top things of, no matter what, this form of blocking is not very effective and quite easy to circumvent.
/ HAX
Torrentfreak: The Pirate Bay Must Be Blocked in Sweden, Court of Appeal Rules »
A project tackling issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment has called on the European Commission to abandon its proposals for mandatory service provider filtering of user-uploaded content. Communia, which has Creative Commons as a founder member, says such filters will violate users’ fundamental rights.
Torrentfreak: Public Domain Project Calls on EU to Abandon Piracy Filter Proposals »
EDRi: 2017 – another extremely challenging year for digital rights »
These proposals will cause major collateral damage – making many everyday habits on the web and many services you regularly use downright illegal, subject to fees or, at the very least, mired in legal uncertainty.
Julia Reda, Pirate MEP: 10 everyday things on the web the EU Commission wants to make illegal »
Google removed over 900 million pirate site URLs from its search results in 2016. The staggering number is an increase of nearly 100% compared to the year before. While Google has taken some steps to make pirate sites less visible, it continues to disagree with rightsholders on how to move forward.
TorrentFreak: Google Removed Over 900 Million ‘Pirate’ Links in 2016 »
