TorrentFreak

Last October the Antwerp Court of Appeal ordered two Belgian ISPs to block subscriber access to 11 domains connected to The Pirate Bay. The local anti-piracy movement applauded the landmark verdict which opened the doors for further censorship attempts. However, this cheerful mood was short-lived. Countering the court decision The Pirate Bay team registered a [...]

Efforts by anti-piracy groups to make The Pirate Bay inaccessible have turned into a proxy war, quite literally. After the Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN managed to shutter several proxy sites, their Belgian colleagues at BAF are now attempting to do the same. The group has threatened to sue the owner of a proxy if his site stays online, but thus far the threat hasn’t had the desired effect.

A Belgian man was found guilty of posting several Kaiser Chiefs tracks onto the Internet before the official release. The court ordered the 48-year old to pay the local music rights group SABAM 65,651 euro ($87.500) in damages. The man was further fined 5,500. In addition to the Kaiser Chiefs tracks, police found a total [...]

After a court ordered two of the largest Belgian Internet service providers to prevent their users accessing The Pirate Bay, the local anti-piracy outfit is now urging other ISPs to do the same. Internet providers who refuse to give in to this request within 10 days will be taken to court, a threatening letter explains. The blackmailing tactic seems to have worked, as one of the smaller ISPs has already disabled access to The Pirate Bay.

Two weeks ago the Antwerp Court of Appeal ordered the Belgian ISPs Belgacom and Telenet to initiate DNS blockades of 11 domains connected to The Pirate Bay within 14 days or face fines. Today the 14 days expired and people who are trying to visit The Pirate Bay now see the following message. “You have [...]

Showing how futile Internet censorship can be, The Pirate Bay has registered a new domain name to allow Belgian users to access the site and bypass a recent court order. For just a few dollars, The Pirate Bay should now be fully accessible in the future, and the site has already started redirecting Belgian users to their new home.

A court in Belgium ruled that ISPs can be forced, and are obliged to, either block or filter copyright infringing content on P2P networks. Freedom of expression and privacy are not important in this regard. How exactly ISPs are supposed to block and filter copyrighted content remains a mystery.