
Dutch Court of Appeals overturns Pirate Bay IP blockade - koenrh
http://bureaubrandeis.com/duly-noted/court-appeals-denies-ip-block/
======
hrkristian
I'm always intrigued by the lack of vision shown by organisations like BREIN.
Blocking an IP address will not block an idea deeply embedded in the mindset
of almost whole generations.

It is, after all, "common knowledge" distribution has shifted, and pirates use
this at every turn to justify their actions.

>A copy is not theft, it is a copy, final.

>The money I didn't spend on this movie was already earmarked for another
purpose; nothing changed.

There's a social aspect, too.

>All my friends are pirating, if I do not, I fall behind; there is no choice.

Like an empire or a dynasty, the entertainment business is simply too
entrenched; disconnected from the real world, to realise they are the ones at
fault. It's not a question of ethics ( _we_ made it, _we_ earned it, abide by
_our_ wishes), it's a matter of majority opinion.

It's refreshing to see this result, I just hope it sprung from correct
reasoning, blocking any form of information should be done under the harshest
of scrutinies, which means not just for the sake of attempting the sate a
billion-dollar industry.

Used to be a time, when capitalism meant keeping with the times or succumbing
to it. This sometimes feels eerily reminiscent of what I was taught about
Soviet Russia: keeping their factories and businesses going at all costs,
because the 5-year-plan was more important than progress.

USSR did not need billions of buckets, we do not need billions of optical
disks.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
The vision of BREIN is not build on killing piracy, it is to secure funding.
BREIN gets most of its funding from Hollywood. It is a commercial institution:
If they generate lots of anti-piracy press they get more, or easier-to-get
funds, if they are not visible they get less, or harder-to-get funds. BREIN
does not necessarily have to kill piracy to secure its funding. It just needs
to raise a stink. If they killed piracy they would also kill themselves.

The blocking of TBP and all known proxy IP's was a huge stink. Persistent
pirates will find it easy to circumvent this. They may even abandon public
tracker torrents and flock to Usenet. I think the goal is to make the life of
the common pirate more difficult. Many moms and pops only knew how to download
a movie from TPB. Once they saw the "The court ordered us to block this page"
they stopped watching movies or went back to ordering DVDs.

Just a few weeks ago BREIN send its threatening letters to amateur subtitle
sites and their uploaders (for unlicensed derivative works). Piracy on the
whole will not be hampered when pirates can't download the Dutch subtitles to
an English movie. Just a few kids, deaf people and older folk who have trouble
understanding English, or the few anime lovers who can't fully speak Japanese.
So what _have_ they accomplished with this? A big stink. A nice report to give
to those that fund them. Shown that they are willing to align themselves with
Hollywood's agenda (I bet the idea to start going after subtitle sites
originally came from there). Shown that they are deserving of (more) funds.

If we all agree that facilitating copyright infringement is against the law,
then blocking sites that exist to facilitate copyright infringement does not
seem too harsh or close to censorship to me. If you want to avoid sites being
closed for being against the law, then lobby to change/overhaul copyright law.

------
sentenza
The fight against Bittorrent is more important than many realize. If "they"
get away with destroying a technology (after all, it's only a protocol) for
something as unimportant as copyright, we're truly fucked.

~~~
tomp
> for something as unimportant as money

Fixed that for you. Music and movies are huge industries.

BTW, I think they are loosing. Sure, some laws are being passed, but there are
several generations alive today that consider piracy something normal and
natural. It's all a matter of who is in charge; today's leaders are old, they
don't consider piracy to be good and normal. When we (our generation) become
old and get in charge, we'll embed our worldviews in the laws.

~~~
chii
except it seems to be that those who pirate (or consider piracy "normal") are
not those who are going to be the elites that sit in parliment and make laws.

~~~
higherpurpose
Haven't they linked piracy coming from Senate IP's? I think it's already
happening in Congress. I also think you're underestimating how many people
have pirated something at least once a year. Perhaps some are the kind of
people who "always pay for their music and shows", since it's relatively cheap
to begin with, but then go and pirate something like Adobe Photoshop.

------
neals
I think it's nice to live in a country where courts still exist that are not
influenced by lobbyist and politics. Especially since BREIN has been ordered
to repay the 326.000 in court fees.

~~~
skrebbel
And where internet providers owned by publicly traded corporations actually
spend time and money fighting in court.

~~~
gnur
And where an internet provider not even included in the original case joined
in only for the pursuing justice. XS4ALL has always claimed to be fighting for
a free internet, with this case, they proved it to me.

------
belorn
One of the few a great judgment in recent time. It is nice to see that
cost–benefit still count for something, rather than emotional response backed
by government control.

It has been around 200 years, and society has changed for the better by it.
Every time government trail away from it, especially in punishment, it seem to
be caused by corruption. Good that the Court of Appeals of The Hague can
recognize and see it.

~~~
furyg3
This is subjective, but as an American living in NL I've been fairly impressed
with the Dutch government's (parliament, cities, unions, within parties, and
courts) pragmatism.

While there are cases of people maintaining hard-line statements, it seems to
be less common than in normal US discourse.

~~~
troels
Probably, the common law vs. Civil law has a lot to do with that.

~~~
furyg3
I'm not sure. Civil codified law would make the judiciary less able to say
"well, we tried X, it doesn't work, let's do something else". Anyway, I'm
referring to something more broad than that.

While Dutch politics is still, well... politics, it seems like there is much
more of a pragmatic approach. People expect the government to be effective.
"Is policy X working or not?" is a common theme on the news, there are lots of
statistics and reports, and politicians aren't trying to _always_ spin their
way out of them (though it certainly still happens, just less).

The whole society is a lot less concerned with black and white framings like
grand economic theories, philosophical stances on law and order, or enforcing
morality. They're more concerned with things working.

------
neals
The ISP just said on the news that the blockade that they had to apply since
2012 was actually very helpful for their case. Independent research (from TNO)
showed no decline in torrent traffic and literally no effect of the blockade.
The judge ruled the blockade "ineffective" and said "there are other means of
copyright protection that make more sense".

~~~
brokenparser
TIL TNO is the new NSA

~~~
hnisnotreddit
congrats. you compelled me to create an account.

[https://1-media-
cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/q/image/1365/86/13...](https://1-media-
cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/q/image/1365/86/1365867839932.jpg)

~~~
brokenparser
Go back to 4chan ;)

------
sanityinc
Seems like this would open the way for the UK ISPs which are currently obliged
to block torrent sites to get that requirement overturned. BT and others
pushed back against it in the first place, IIRC.

~~~
sdfjkl
Only if the legislation there also permits doing away with ineffective
measures. Not to mention that this will then lead to a push for more effective
ones.

------
staticelf
Too bad I live in a country where it's possible and too easy to buy the courts
(Sweden).

------
NicoJuicy
They did not really "denied" it. Their conclusion was: it just doesn't help.
So we are taking away the possibility to block piratebay.

The only result (according to the judge) is that less frequent downloaders
look for alternatives.

PS. Still glad that something like this just happens. Entertainment industry
allowed firms like Netflix to rise because of their lack of vision, it's easy
to blame the internet...

~~~
tluyben2
I think a lot of people would flock to legal alternatives if there were any.
As long as there are not...

~~~
chii
> flock to legal alternatives

legal and cheaper. The entrenched publishers of yesteryear's media still makes
their products available at outrageous prices. I m glad netflix exists, but
the media companies don't like the way technology is making distribution a
commodity (where they extract their value from).

~~~
tluyben2
True, but I think most solutions which are legal in the US now are cheaper
right? But it's quite simple (I know a lot of EU based people agree with it);
as long as we cannot watch everything the US can watch at the moment the US
can watch it (in English, not dubbed as is normal in DE, ES and probably other
countries), people will aggressively pirate anything there is. No-one is going
to wait for a sports program, movie or show for months after it airs in the
US; that time has passed because on Facebook/Twitter/whatever everyone already
is talking about that show/movie so you want to have instant gratification.
And while everyone seems to do meditation these days, mustering patience for
their favorite program is not one of the skills picked up.

It makes me angry when I travel to Spain for business or vacation and suddenly
all my devices want to connect to the local stores (even though i'm Dutch, I
pay in NL etc) and serve me crap in Spanish. Ever watched a dubbed UK/US
thriller dubbed in Spanish? It's painful. Not too strange my UK colleagues
living there all have proxies and there are thriving proxy and 'torrent setup
box' businesses popping up all over the place.

