Yesterday Slyck reported that an appeals court in the Netherlands ruled that The Pirate Bay must block access to Dutch users, or face a 50,000 Euro a day fine. Since no one seems to be taking direct responsibility for The Pirate Bay these days, BREIN correctly anticipated that the ruling would mean very little. That said, BREIN sued two ISPs, Ziggo and XS4all, hoping to force an ISP-level ban on the tracker.

It seems BREIN has received a mixed ruling from the courts today. According to a BREIN press release, they can't sue the ISPs or force them to stop providing access to The Pirate Bay, but they can sue users who break the law and access the site. But BREIN doesn't appear to be very interested in suing individuals - negative publicity and general ineffectiveness aren't something the music industry wants to deal with as their nascent recovery gains ground.

"It is essential that the access to illegal sites is blocked when they deliberately ignore the law and legal verdicts, otherwise the lawlessnes on the Internet can not be stopped", says BREIN director Tim Kuik. "We prefer the blocking of The Pirate Bay above suing individual internet users exactly because it is less far-reaching and invasive, although it is interesting that Ziggo stated in the hearing that it is prepared to disclose the name and address of infringing subscribers."

BREIN refers to this ruling as "preliminary", indicating they are not through with this their goal of a total ISP-level block of The Pirate Bay. Indeed, this battle is far from over.

"It can not be true that The Pirate Bay and its operators get free reign by hiding in Thailand and Cambodia and ignoring court verdicts", says BREIN frontman Tim Kuik. "We do not accept this. We already have filed proceedings on the merits against Ziggo and XS4ALL and we will also appeal this controversial preliminary decision."

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Date: 2010-07-19 Source: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=2002