High Court orders British ISPs to block "The Pirate Bay"

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by afv011

I disagree, usually adding friction is a sure way to make people more determined to get there and work harder to find a workaround.

Yes. You'll be surprised at how fast people learned how to use a VPN to bypass free's restrictions. (Free is a french ISP, they decided to restrict to bandwidth on some services : youtube, steam, app store, google play....)

[jgaiser]

Pirates will pirate. Yeah, you might deter the onsey-twosey downloader, but the serious pirates aren't even going to slow down.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

It is all about increasing friction.
The harder it is to do something, the more people will give up along the way and just not bother. Some people will always continue to the end, no matter how hard it is, but most won't.
An increasing awareness that legal action is being taken may also dissuade people.

They blocked The Pirate Bay. So what? It's not like this was the only torrent source. It was just the most notorious one. What this does is advertize piracy.

[hunnymonster]

Originally Posted by afv011

Oh noes, you spilled the beans!

Hilariously its BTs own tech support test to see if its being blocked by Cleanfeed...

[frahse]

Well, you have to give them an "E" for effort, which does come out ahead of "F" for fail if nothing else.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

They blocked The Pirate Bay. So what? It's not like this was the only torrent source. It was just the most notorious one.

And the point of my update is that they have now blocked the next three most notorious ones. After that, they'll block the next ones.

[HarryT]

... which is absolutely the right thing to do. These are criminal sites, and the blocking is done as the result of court cases in which the sites concerned have every opportunity to defend themselves, but choose not to do so.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by afv001

I disagree, usually adding friction is a sure way to make people more determined to get there and work harder to find a workaround.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Pirates will pirate. Yeah, you might deter the onsey-twosey downloader, but the serious pirates aren't even going to slow down.

Agreed.
If someone really really wants to pirate, they will indeed work around any friction thrown in their path.
Those aren't the people these manoeuvers are aimed at.
They are concerned about casual piracy becoming viewed as something everyone does, and therefore not really wrong. (An obvious analogy would be with speeding).
They are trying to stop Mr & Mrs Doe from checking if the album they want is available for free before checking iTunes/Amazon to see how much it would cost.
A million onsey-twosey downloaders frighten them far more than a handful of people downloading thousands of albums, because the onesey-twoseys might actually be lost sales.
It is a big red light saying two things:
a) "What you are doing is wrong"
b) "We are trying to stop you".
Those two things alone will be enough to dissuade many otherwise law-abiding people, either because of moral twinges, or of fear of getting caught.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by HarryT

... which is absolutely the right thing to do. These are criminal sites, and the blocking is done as the result of court cases in which the sites concerned have every opportunity to defend themselves, but choose not to do so.

In the recent cases, I'm not actually sure that this is true. (It was in the Newsbin case).
The sites themselves are not defendents in the action, and were not served with papers.
The actual 'defendents', the ISPs, acquiesced to the orders, and made no actual defence.
While it makes no practical difference in these cases, it is a process concern, and could be abused.

[HarryT]

I wasn't aware of that. Thanks! I don't think, however, that anyone could argue that these are sites which have any purpose in existing other than to encourage and aid copyright infringement. As such it's right and proper that every legal means should be employed to shut off traffic to them.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

... which is absolutely the right thing to do. These are criminal sites, and the blocking is done as the result of court cases in which the sites concerned have every opportunity to defend themselves, but choose not to do so.

The only defendents were ISPs. As far as I can see there was no attempt to contact any of the sites involved, and the only information about them provided was by the BPI.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/379.html

I'm not really sure how Chancery Judges operate, but from the number of mentions of Pirate Bay in this case I would guess it was the blocking of that site that set a precedent here and allowed this one to be fast-tracked? Which would mean there will be a lot more of these blocking rulings coming up in the near future.

I'd also point out (again) that mobileread.com also facilitates copyright violation in the UK. I doubt any disclaimers saying "only download if you are legally entitled in your country" would suffice as a defence, even if the site were allowed to put forward a case.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I'd also point out (again) that mobileread.com also facilitates copyright violation in the UK. I doubt any disclaimers saying "only download if you are legally entitled in your country" would suffice as a defence, even if the site were allowed to put forward a case.

You are of course perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I suspect you'd struggle to convince anyone that the primary purpose of MR is to facilitate copyright infringement, which is unquestionably the case with these sites that have been blocked. The test that courts have applied for many years in cases of this nature is "does the site" (or whatever) "have any significant non-infringing use". It probably wouldn't be too tough to convince someone that MR does have non-infringing uses, but you'd struggle to show that any of the sites that have been blocked do.

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You are of course perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I suspect you'd struggle to convince anyone that the primary purpose of MR is to facilitate copyright infringement, which is unquestionably the case with these sites that have been blocked. The test that courts have applied for many years in cases of this nature is "does the site" (or whatever) "have any significant non-infringing use". It probably wouldn't be too tough to convince someone that MR does have non-infringing uses, but you'd struggle to show that any of the sites that have been blocked do.

The interesting aspect, for me, is that the sites being blocked have not been part of the process. As far as I can see not one of the three sites has been given the opportunity to prove or argue that have nay non-infringement use.

The judge literally writes 'The Claimants contend' and bases further statements on the evidence the claimants present. I have a hard time seeing how a court case where evidence the claimants present is taken for granted without even attempting to contact the parties the evidence is presented against, letting alone giving them an opportunity to raise a defense, can be balanced.

If this becomes a more common practice, it will be irrelevant what whether the primary purpose of a site is to facilitate copyright infringement or whether they indeed do have significant other use. As long as the claimants contend that the target site of the process is a main infringer (or facilitator of infringement) it will be sufficient for a blocking verdict.

In this case I am more than happy to believe they do little or nothing else (I had never heard of any of the three sites) than infringing copyrights, however, I strongly believe that a verdict where the accused has at no point been offered an opportunity for defense is a far cry from real justice and and unworthy of a rechtsstaat.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Soldim

The interesting aspect, for me, is that the sites being blocked have not been part of the process. As far as I can see not one of the three sites has been given the opportunity to prove or argue that have nay non-infringement use.

[...]
In this case I am more than happy to believe they do little or nothing else (I had never heard of any of the three sites) than infringing copyrights, however, I strongly believe that a verdict where the accused has at no point been offered an opportunity for defense is a far cry from real justice and and unworthy of a rechtsstaat.

I broadly agree with you, at a matter of principle.
The key is that the sites are not defendents, the ISPs are.
In these cases, the courts have accepted that there is no point trying to join the sites as parties, as there is no reasonable belief that they would take part in proceedings if there were invited. That would not be the case for a 'normal' site.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I broadly agree with you, at a matter of principle.
The key is that the sites are not defendents, the ISPs are.
In these cases, the courts have accepted that there is no point trying to join the sites as parties, as there is no reasonable belief that they would take part in proceedings if there were invited. That would not be the case for a 'normal' site.

Was this case heard by a specialist IPR court? If it was, the judge would himself be an expert in IP law, and hence well qualified to make a decision on the matter.