Austrian Supreme Court Orders Local ISPs To Block The Pirate Bay & 1337x

Austrian Supreme Court Instructs That The Pirate Bay & 1337x Must Be Blocked

In a ruling, the Commercial Court of Vienna, Austria has ordered the local Internet Services Providers (ISPs) to block subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay (TPB) and other “structurally-infringing” sites including 1337x.to, isohunt.to, and h33t.to, based on a lawsuit filed by the copyright holders, according to TorrentFreak.

For those unaware, The Pirate Bay, is a BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing site, that allows visitors to search, download and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol. The popular torrent website has been embroiled in a legal dispute with the anti-piracy outfits and rights holders from several years due to violations of copyright laws. As a result, the website has faced shutdowns and blockades in several countries and imprisonment of its founders. However, The Pirate Bay continues to operate by switching to numerous new web addresses to continue their operation to avoid seizures or other legal threats.

Meanwhile, the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) in Austria has welcomed the Commercial Court’s decision and also said that it would be happy to help in implementing the order and have more sites blocked in the near future.

“For the further development of the online music market it is a very gratifying decision. We call on the Internet providers to work together towards a legally compliant and straightforward implementation of site-blocking,” managing director of the IFPI Franz Medwenitsch said, reports TorrentFreak.

Besides the above order, the Court also ruled that only if copyright holders have finished all their options to take action against those responsible for infringement, only then ISP blocks would be necessary, a decision that was welcomed by the Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA).

The ISPs claimed that only torrent files and not the content were available on the portals. They also expressed discontent on the limitation of access to legitimate content.

“A problem in this context is that the offending pages also have legal content and it is no longer possible to access that if barriers are put in place,” said ISPA Secretary General Maximilian Schubert.

With regards to prospective for blocking legitimate content as well as that of infringing copyright, the Court twisted the ISPs’ own arguments against them to some extent.

In the past, the ISPs had previously argued that blocking The Pirate Bay and other sites was meaningless, as the torrents they host would still be available on a different location. Taking this point into consideration, the Court found that it was easy for people to upload their torrents on unblocked sites, as there were plenty available.

Condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling, the ISPA pointed out that they will still be held responsible for decisions regarding ISP blocks in the future.

“We do not support illegal content on the Internet in any way, but consider it extremely questionable that the decision on what is illegal and what is not falls to ISPs, instead of a court,” said ISPA Secretary General Maximilian.

“Although we find it positive that a court of last resort has taken the decision, the assessment of the website in the first instance continues to be left to the Internet provider. The Supreme Court’s expansion of the circle of sites that be potentially blocked further complicates this task for the operator and furthers the privatization of law enforcement.

“It is extremely unpleasant that even after more than 10 years of fierce discussion, there is still no compelling legal basis for a court decision on Internet blocking, which puts providers in the role of both judge and hangman.”

The Internet body also argued that when a content is blocked instead of being removed, it only shifts the problem and fails to solve the basic problem.

“Illegal content is permanently removed from the network by deletion. Everything else is a placebo with extremely dangerous side effects, which can easily be bypassed by both providers and consumers. The only thing that remains is a blocking infrastructure that can be misused for many purposes and, unfortunately, will be used in many places,” Schubert says.

“The current situation, where providers have to block the rightsholders quasi on the spot, if they do not want to engage in a time-consuming and cost-intensive litigation, is really not sustainable so we issue a call to action to the legislature.”

The domains that were listed in the case, many of which are already obsolete, are: thepiratebay.fm, thepiratebay.gd, thepiratebay.la, thepiratebay.mn, thepiratebay.ms, thepiratebay.mu, thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sh, thepiratebay.tw, thepiratebay.vg, isohunt.to, 1337x.to and h33t.to.

Currently, the only domain used by The Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.org) is not included in the list. Whether or not, this domain would be included in the list in the future is unclear.

Source: TorrentFreak

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