The Pirate Bay has been censored again in Italy

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: [Italien: The Pirate Bay wieder zensuriert | http://www.unwatched.org/node/1703]

Following the reversal by the Italian Court of Cassation of the appeal won
on 24 September 2008 against the decision of the Italian court of August
2008 that ordered the seizure of The Pirate Bay (TPB) in Italy, TPB was once
again censored in Italy.

The Italian Supreme Court has revised the case and has found that Italian
ISPs can be obliged to censor their networks and block BitTorrent search
sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens.
The Supreme Court decided that sites offering torrent files linking to
copyrighted material are considered as engaged in criminal activity.

At the beginning of February 2010, the case was again reviewed by the Court
of Bergamo which decided that all Italian ISPs will have to deny access to
The Pirate Bay to their customers.

Pirate Bay lawyers are considering appealing to the Supreme Court as well as
bringing the case before the European Court of Justice.

In the meantime, in UK in a similar case, Alan Ellis, the first person to be
prosecuted for online music sharing was acquitted by the court. Ellis was
accused of making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Oink website that
he operated. The site which was shut down in 2007 had more than 200 000
members and, just like The Pirate Bay, did not illegally host copyrighted
material but only enabled its members to find other people that would share
files.

The accusations stated that Ellis was making money from users who had to pay
a donation in order to be able to ask friends to join, as the membership was
based on invitation. However, some users contested this stating that while
it was possible to make donations to Oink, invitation rights were granted
not for donations but for material contributions to the site. “All I do is
really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of
the music is on my website,” said Ellis.

Following the court’s decision, on 16 January 2010, 17 representatives from
the music, film and television industries as well as sports and union
representatives published an open letter supporting Business Secretary Lord
Mandelson’s controversial plans to give the government extended powers to
change copyright law in view of fighting piracy online.

Mandelson’s proposals which were included as a clause in the Digital Economy
bill presently in progress in the House of Lords have been strongly opposed
by privacy campaigners and at the beginning of January, the government
submitted a list of amendments to the Digital Economy bill which diluted the
respective clause so that the law will be amended in future only if there is
a “significant” new threat of infringement. The clause was not entirely
scrapped however.

The Pirate Bay To Be Censored in Italy, Again (7.02.2010)
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-to-be-censored-in-italy-again-100207/

Comment on Cassation Court sentence, III session 23.12.2009, no. 49437 (only
in Italian, 21.01.2010)
http://www.diritto.it/docs/28814

Jury clears British ‘Pirate Bay’ operator of fraud charge (15.01.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/15/file-sharing-oink-website-acquittal

PirateBay will be censored (only in Italian, 8.02.2010)
http://blog.tntvillage.scambioetico.org/?p=5292

EDRi-gram: The Pirate Bay may be banned in Italy (7.10.2009)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number7.19/italy-the-pirate-bay-decision