Quote:
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.
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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.