A group of British actors, directors and producers have written an open letter to The Times newspaper. Their concern – downloads of TV episodes and films. What is needed, they claim, is for the government to force the ISPs to do something about it.
Earlier this year a Danish court ordered the ISP ‘Tele2′ to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The appeal of this initial ruling was lost two weeks ago, but the case is far from over. Tele2 has decided to appeal the decision before the Supreme Court, supported by Denmark’s telecommunications industry association.
The Pirate Bay has successfully appealed the decision of an Italian judge who had ordered ISPs to block access to the popular BitTorrent tracker last month. The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and that Italian users should regain access to the site.
The last year has seen the IFPI shift its focus from the individual filesharer, to their ISPs. After Denmark, Norway and Ireland, the anti-piracy lobbyists have now announced that they will go after a Swedish ISP, claiming that the company facilitates copyright infringement.
Last week a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. The decision heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering, and it now turns out that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law.
The Pirate Bay has just launched jesperbay.org as a countermeasure to the Danish ISP block that was announced yesterday. The site is named after Jesper Bay, the head of the Danish IFPI and gives detailed instructions for affected customers on how to regain access to The Pirate Bay.
Pirate Parties around the world are protesting against a recent Net censorship proposal by EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini. Frattini has recently been urging ministers at the European Union to consider censoring certain search keywords in a bid to curb terrorism.
Turkey has banned what’s arguably the most well known BitTorrent site in existence. Since about a week, The Pirate Bay has become inaccessible in the country. According to a reader from Turkey and the site’s admins, a recent ruling might have caused TPB to be banned.
