PirateBay – blocked in Denmark

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

Following a complaint by IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic
Industry), a Danish bailiff court issued on 4 February 2008 an injunction
ordering Tele2, one of the major ISPs in Denmark, to block the access to the
PirateBay domains.

IFPI asked the court for this injunction because most of the materials
referred on PirateBay are copyrighted and the exchange of these materials
between PirateBay users is illegal. IFPI considered that Tele2 was not
directly liable for the illegal copying, but was contributing to it, by
making temporary copies of torrent files.

Tele2 has been complying with the injunction so far by DNS filtering (same
method as used in the child pornography filters and AllOfMp3), but is
determined to fight against the injunction in the upper court in two weeks
time.

Niels Elgaard Larsen from the IT-Political Association of Denmark explained
the situation for EDRi-gram:
“We see a slippery slope. Blocking of first child porn, then a non-EU
(Russian) site with alleged illegal music (AllOfMp3), and now a search
engine inside the EU. Elsewhere in EU we hear politicians that want to block
recipes for explosives, ads for non-taxed gambling, etc.
This is not about music and movies at piratebay or anywhere else. This is
about making ISP’s policing the content flowing through their networks. It
is about freedom on the internet. Do we want an open or a closed internet ?”

But the injunction seema to have no direct effect on PirateBay website,
that announces an increase by 12% of the number of visits from Denmark.
According to their blog the website “is growing more because of the media
attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter –
our guess is that a lot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of
the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.”

However, the court cases against the popular torrent tracker are not over.
PirateBay is preparing for a long trial starting this spring following the
2006 seizure of their servers and 20 months of investigation. According to
the Prosecutor Hakan Roswall, the website was commercially exploiting
copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising
revenues.

Piratebay expects the trial to last for years, especially because the
decision in this case will be appealed by one of the parties. They also
claim that this will not affect at all their activity.

After it has been claimed that PirateBay is supporting trackers with child
pornography, the website owners announced that they were collaborating with
the Police officers to teach them “how to actually download stuff using the
BT protocol. The police has actually been very open and frank with us about
their technical difficulties and asking for help is the best solutions for
all parties.”

Bailiff Court Decision (only in Danish, 4.02.2008)
http://www.computerworld.dk/modules/davinci/getfile.php?id=18886&attachment

Danish ISP shuts access to file-sharing Pirate Bay (4.02.2008)
http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSL0480268320080204?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Denmark, first look (8.02.2008)
http://courtblog.thepiratebay.org/2008/02/08/denmark-first-look/

Pirate Bay hit with legal action (31.01.2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7219802.stm

Prepare for mudwrestling (6.02.2008)
http://courtblog.thepiratebay.org/2008/02/06/prepare-for-mudwrestling/