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Europe's top court rules that ISPs should block The Pirate Bay
Even though its founders are long gone, The Pirate Bay remains one of the biggest piracy websites on the planet. Over the last decade, the torrent hub has been shutdown, reborn and consistently targeted in numerous lawsuits, of which one is only now coming to a close. In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) told Dutch ISPs today that they must block access to The Pirate Bay because it facilitates an "act of communication" by allowing users to obtain pirated material.
Dutch ISPs overturn Pirate Bay blocking order, get pieces of eight for the trouble
In many countries, ISPs are regarded as partly culpable for the P-word that's now synonymous with the internet. We're talking, of course, about piracy. Government and legal pressure has forced several ISPs to block sites known for illegal file distribution, with The Pirate Bay being a prime target due to its popularity. Today, however, a court in The Netherlands has overturned an order compelling two of the country's major ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, based on the belief that's it's ineffective and tantamount to censorship. Local anti-piracy group BREIN, with the help of a judge and gavel, put the restriction in place in 2012 -- the ISPs appealed, and won. The Dutch court that's sided with the providers has said that a block is not only against the freedom of information, but referenced a report showing it had little impact on torrent traffic. (As most of us know, for every site that's squashed by the banhammer, there is a swarm of others providing the same services.) It gets even worse for BREIN, too, as now it's been ordered to pay 326,000 euros (around $445,000) for the trouble it's caused. That should buy at least a couple of lawyers lunch and new suits, we'd imagine.
