Finnish ISP ordered to block The Pirate Bay

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: [Finnischer Provider soll “The Pirate Bay” sperren | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.21_Finnischer_Provider_soll_The_Pirate_Bay_sperren?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20111110]

Hot on the heels of a Belgian court decision obligating two ISPs to block
the Pirate Bay, the Helsinki District Court ruled on 26 October 2011 that
the large Finnish ISP Elisa must block access to The Pirate Bay from its
network, or face a 100 000 Euros fine. The block must take effect by 18
November 2011.

Elisa says it will appeal the ruling. In Elisa’s view, such blocks are
ineffective against online copyright infringement.

The case was brought in May against Elisa by the Copyright Information and
Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) on behalf of IFPI Finland on the basis that
they claimed to have identified Elisa as the operator with most Pirate Bay
users.

The ruling says Elisa must remove The Pirate Bay’s domain names from its
DNS service and block traffic to the IP addresses of The Pirate Bay. The
ruling has been criticized as vague since neither the domain names or the
IP addresses were specified, so Elisa now has the burden of determining
which domain names and IP addresses belong to The Pirate Bay.

The ruling is a temporary injunction and requires charges to be
brought against The Pirate Bay itself within 30 days. This may make the
whole issue moot since The Pirate Bay’s founders have already been tried
in Swedish courts, and according to the law they cannot be tried twice for
the same deed.

There are rumours that the Elisa block will already have been circumvented
by the time it is enacted. There is an old saying that the Internet sees
censorship as damage and routes around it. That is exactly what happened
in Belgium.

Belgian court: Two ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay (5.10.2011)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.19/belgium-isp-blocking-pirate-bay

ENDitorial: Belgian music industry acts to undermine copyright law
(19.10.2011)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.20/belgian-music-industry-copyright

Elisa press release (only in Finnish, 26.10.2011)
http://www.elisa.fi/ir/pressi/index.cfm?t=100&o=5120&did=17563

TorrentFreak: Finnish ISP Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay (26.10.2011)
http://torrentfreak.com/finnish-isp-ordered-to-block-the-pirate-bay-111026/

Yle News: Music producers challenge Pirate Bay (26.05.2011)
http://yle.fi/uutiset/news/2011/05/music_producers_challenge_pirate_bay_2622417.html

(Contribution by Timo Karjalainen EDRi-member Effi- Finland)