Make me sick
everytime that a judge proves to be a peasant ignorant about the matters that he/she rules.
A Belgian judge who slapped a €2,500 per day fine on an ISP until it filtered its network for music copyright infringements has reversed the decision after music lawyers conceded it wasn't technically possible. The successful appeal by provider Scarlet last week overturns a ruling made in July last year. The final skirmish in …
Except for musicians, but they're a minority, so what. The guiding principle is: equal misery for all.
SABAM are notorious for their inefficiency. For example, any party say in a scout hut, you had to pay something like 15quid "music reproduction rights" and yes they were actively checked. Costing far more (a tour every weekend night of all scout/school/... spaces) than the price. All in all, they collect royalties at a higher cost than the royalties collected.
So in the end, musicians basically pay "protection money".
I've lived in Belgium for years. Trust me, the courts and politicians here make their British equivalents look like legal and philosophical giants (think Solomon/Socrates/Occam etc).
This is the country that's spent nearly 2 years without an operational government.
This is the country that's about the size of Wales, but has 5 governments.
This is the country that's been in the top 10 for levels of national debt since the 80s.
This is the country where politicians can be caught red handed with their hand in the cookie-jar, go to *prison* for fraud, and still get back into office.
This is the country where just having an internet connection means you pay those b*stards at AUVIBEL about 30 euro per year to "compensate" for assumed copyright infringement. Lets not get started on levy of CDs/DVDs etc.
Then again, their beer and chocolate do make up for a lot of faults....
Plus, I can be in and out of Paris with almost no effort..... ;)
Why not do this to BT?
After all, they are planing to deploy systems that do deep packet inspection, so they can no longer claim to be a simple "common carrier", unable to ploice the data stream, and thus should be held liable for all illegal content on thier network.
That would be sweet justice!
OK, a bummer for everyone in the long term...