back to article Dutch court clogs Pirate Bay

A Dutch court has ordered The Pirate Bay to remove itself from the Netherlands within 10 days or face fines of 30,000 euros per day. The ban is unsurprisingly the result of a copyright lawsuit and call for action filed by the local recording industry lobby group, Stichting Brein. A judge on Thursday ordered the three Pirate …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Alpha Centauri

    "...the ruling came as a surprise to the three founders because they hadn't received an official summons - and weren't even aware of the case.

    Because the trio weren't present at the hearing, the court issued a default judgment in Stichting Brein's favor."

    sounds strangely familiar...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Hmm

    Hold on, your allows to run a company from prison in the netherlands???, you arent allowed to have that kind of responsibility in the UK so they shouldnt be able to effect any change within their company from a cell.

    On a side point shouldnt due process allow the defendants the right to have their voice heard in court, the fact they were never notified about the case is itself a travesty of law.

    Oh well, just shows if you have the lobbyists you can get anythging banned.

  3. Moss Icely Spaceport
    FAIL

    bzzzzzzzt

    Another failure of the legal profession to understand even the basics of the interwebs!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    censorship at it finest?!

    so they couldn't block the website because of "freedom of speech", the walk around was to order the website _not_ to serve their residence or face a fine!

    how can this be accepted? if the government want to censor a website, shouldn't the government be the one that order all ISPs to block access to the said website? why should the website be responsible for handling the censoring of it traffic especially when the said censoring is _NOT_ in the website best intreast?

    first the USofA with gambling websites and now this! if the government wish to censor the internet, they should be clear about it and do it themselves. Forcing a 3rd party to do it doesn't change the fact that it is a government sponsored censorship. They should take lessons from China and be open about the fact that they are censoring the internet.

  5. King Edward I
    Joke

    Hmmm

    If($ListOfDutchGovermentIPs{$IP}){

    Print $error_message;

    }

    else{

    print $Website;

    }

    Not the most elegant way to implement it, but...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Justice for $$$

    1. Bring suit.

    2. Bribe court to not notify the victim

    3. Victim doesn't turn up

    4. Be awarded victory by default because victim doesn't turn up

    5. Profit!

    Ah Holland, you used to be so cool. : (

  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Most judges suffer from "The Technological Generation Gap"

    Expect more dumb rulings as most judges suffer from "The Technological Generation Gap".

    Understanding the Technological Generation Gap

    http://www.technostress.com/tnp45.htm

    "The Internet interprets censorship as damage

    and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

  8. Tim Russell
    FAIL

    Copyright? Where?

    Pirate bay host links and not software, where's the copyright theft?

    BREIN = Fail!

  9. Thomas 18
    Joke

    fix

    Please select your language:

    <a href="www.thepiratebay.org/">English</a>

    <a href="www.riaa.com/">Dutch</a>

    <a href="www.thepiratebay.org/">Spanish</a>

    <a href="www.thepiratebay.org/">French</a>

  10. Alex 32
    WTF?

    Hmm

    Not sure about the Legal stance of this ruling (unless the justice system is completely different to the UK).

    A summons MUST be given to the defendants, or it can not continue.. yes you can continue if the summons has been given, but not the other way round, no?

  11. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    No summons?

    As I understand it, a court summons is a pretty obvious thing when it happens to you and involves documentary evidence of receipt, so it should *rapidly* become clear which side is telling the truth here.

    However, surely the whole case is a legal pantomime. Both the defendants and their hosting facility are in Sweden, so how can a court in another country have jurisdiction over either? Even within the EU, the principle of subsidiarity applies. If the court wants to block PB in their own country, it should speak to the people who bring PB into their own country. If they wish to block it at source, they should speak to a court in that country or they should speak to the European Court.

    Basic rule about hierarchies: if you want a sibling to do something, ask nicely or go to a parent.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Tim and many others

    The Pirate Bay is a bit torrent tracker, as well as a search facillity. They allow searches, similarly to Goobinghoo et al, (while sending abusive emails to people who ask for their copyright material to be removed) but also host the tracker for the torrent. A torrent does not work without a tracker.

  13. Rik
    FAIL

    @AC2:

    "Hold on, your allows to run a company from prison in the netherlands???"

    Don't know what you've been smoking, but you need to change to something better. The PB guys aren't even in prison at the moment, let alone in a Dutch one.

    And your spelling sucks too.

  14. Doug Glass
    Thumb Up

    Uh Oh

    The store is closed....thieves report elsewhere.

  15. Tom Chiverton 1
    FAIL

    summons and documentary evidence of receipt

    Summons don't need documentary evidence of receipt anymore, as they can be done over email, Facebook etc.

  16. Alex 32
    Stop

    @ Tom T

    ....You serious?!?!?!?

    Bloody Hell!

  17. Michael 28
    Happy

    Simple solution .

    Put in a dialogue box stating that if you are logging in from the netherlands, you will be routed through a proxy in Russia. Since the copyright issues with russia aren't resolved, and most dutch can't read cyrillic, and most public servants wont risk it anyway, job done.

  18. Jacob Reid
    Paris Hilton

    Doesn't matter.

    TPB sold out and is soon to die. All these idiots are just wasting their money.

  19. The First Dave
    Boffin

    @Tom Chiverton 1

    Does that list currently include delivery by BitTorrent ??

  20. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    FAIL

    1 down

    Excellent results, 1 torrent site closed after several years work to close it , only 4,256,234 to go

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all good

    TPB folks going to prison and being fined is a good thing. Even better is Gary McKinnon shipping off to the U.S. for prosecution. It's all good. Get the scum off the streets.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Misconceptions

    There do seem to be a few misconceptions floating around regarding this case and the verdict:

    - (a) the defendants weren't aware of the case

    - (b) the judge automatically hands out default verdicts if one party doesn't show up

    - (c) the judge is somehow hampered by the site being in Sweden

    - (d) the judge looked into the merits of the case

    (a) and (b) From local newspapers, it appears that Brein approached the judge with a fat logbook of their attempts to contact TPB via emial, twitter, chat etc., which incidentally received a cool reception. It didn't convince the judge, who reportedly asked: "Let's be old-fashioned. Don't they have an address register in Sweden that you can use to look up the defendant's address ?". Only when Brein then (reportedly) showed chat conversations in Swedish that clearly referred to the case and which they (apparently) linked to one of the defendants in a plausible way did the judge agree to deliver a default verdict.

    (c) The case brought by Brein against TPB was about whether TPB infringed on *Dutch* copyright law *in Holland* by allowing Dutch citizens to use its service. Now Sweden and Holland are both EU members, so that a Dutch court has all the authority it needs to impose sanctions on Swedish subjects and corporations for any transgressions they commit against Dutch law in Holland. The same holds for any two pairs of EU members. Think of that. Moreover Swedish police are *required* to enforce the verdicts of said court in Sweden. That's the way the EU works, and incidentally I believe that's the way the USA works too (verdicts by one state are usually enforceable in another).

    (d) As TPB didn't show up, the judge had two options: either agree or refuse to deliver a default verdict. Since Brein successfully argued that TPB was aware of the case, the judge agreed to deliver a default verdict. From that point on the judge hardly had any room to manouver, as he is *required* to sustain just about any claim that isn't explicitly opposed by the opposing party. Which in this case meant he *had* to rule in favour of Brein in every particular. Did Brein claim that TPB infringe on copyright and wasn't that denied? Then the judge must so rule. Did Brein claim that the site must be made inaccessible? The judge *must* so rule. Did Brein demand a penalty of 30k per day and argue that TPB makes lots of money, and did no-one deny this? The judge must, again, so rule.

    Not because he's examined Brein's claim and judges it to be fair, but because their claim was at least plausible and *was not opposed*. That's what "default judgment" means folks.

    The moral: don't let judges hand out default judgments against you because you can't be bothered to represent yourself.

  23. Kevin 6
    Grenade

    WOW

    lets face it how hard is it to make a fake log of online conversations?

    also who in the hell is going to believe a e-mail/shitter... err I mean twitter/blog entry/on-line chat saying you got to report to another country on this day cause I'm suing you. I sure as hell know I wouldn't go without a hard copy.

    makes me glad it still requires a paper summons to be signed for where I live ;)

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The more the better

    The more fines and prison time that TPB gets, the better. There's a lesson here for all to learn.

  25. Paul 4

    RE:Misconceptions

    *clap*

    It dose shock me how people would rather make up a conspiracy than believe that someone know for dubious activity (TPB) would ignore a court somons and then claim they never received it.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    A simpler solution

    Make this one stick the other way.

    Make sure as a result of this Dutch joke of a court, all Dutch goods are hereby shunned.

    And that includes Philips and Shell. There are Dutch companies that make a lot more money than the IP Distribution Mafia. If those companies start losing money and are aware that this is a direct result of the IPDistMafia's corruption^wlobbying, there may be some results.

    Please do the same to other countries that has allowed their IPDistMafia the same rampage to their law system. Simply refuse to purchase ANY goods from their companies until they fix their legal system. Afterall that's what some superpower has told the world to do for the last 30+ years: If you disagree with a country's system, blockade them. Only when the corruption^wlobbyism faces a serious threat to their wallet filling regimes, will this stop.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    russia

    Russian wives and now TPB, nice !! I love mother Russia. Russia doesnt give a f... about a RIAA.

  28. alien anthropologist
    Flame

    Kind of pathetic actually....

    .. those of you who shout "travesty of justice" because of the Dutch Court's ruling, yet you did not open your mouths against the piracy supported and facilitated by TPB.

    Selective morality?

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