SP's: The anti-piracy activists have faced a big blow as Swedish court has ruled that copyright owners can not force the Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget to block The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay is blocked by multiple ISPs all around Europe and the anti-piracy activists were hoping that same will happen in Sweden, its country of origin.
Swedish file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is one of the most popular service providers in the game. From time-to-time, the website has faced the fury of law enforcement agencies.
However, in a recent landmark decision of the District Court of Stockholm, it was ruled that copyright owners can not force the Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget to block The Pirate Bay. The court found that Bredbandsbolaget’s operations are not responsible for the illegal activities of some ‘pirate’ customers.
The Pirate Bay is blocked by multiple ISPs all around Europe and the anti-piracy activists were hoping that same will happen in Sweden, its country of origin.
TorrentFreak reports that last year Hollywood giants like WB, Sony, Universal, and Swedish Film Industry joined hands and filed a lawsuit to force the Swedish ISP to block the notorious website.
The court found that the ISP was just an internet provider who pipes the internet traffic from and to its service users. So, if some traffic flow involves uploading and downloading of copyright-protected files using The Pirate Bay, it’s not ISP’s mistake.
“A unanimous district court considers, therefore, that it is not in a position to authorize such a ban as the rights holders want, and therefore rejects their request,” said presiding Chief Magistrate Anders Dereborg.
It’s being expected that this case will end up in the higher Swedish courts. The record labels have been given a time limit of December 18 to challenge the decision in the Svea Court of Appeal. Also, to compensate the ISP’s costs, labels are required to pay about US$160,000.
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