Danish ISP Decides to Fight Order to Block The Pirate Bay

Says the real fight is between the IFPI and The Pirate Bay.

There’s new info on the state of the IFPI’s efforts to have The Pirate Bay blocked by Danish ISP Tele 2. Yesterday brought word that it has decided to fight an order by the ‘fogderetten’, a Danish court which hears economic disputes, for it to begin preventing its Internet subscribers from viewing the site over arguments that it facilitates copyright infringement.

Following the original ruling last week, Tele 2 met with other ISPs in the country this past Monday before making this announcement about its intent to appeal the court’s decision.

Nicholai Pfeiffer, Tele2′s chief of regulations, commented that "Our overall view is we don’t actually want to take sides in this dispute between IFPI and The Pirate Bay."

The IFPI, after learning of Tele 2′s intent to appeal, has already filed additional briefs with the court in order to further justify the need for blocking the site. It has argued that Tele 2 is facilitating copyright infringement by allowing its customers to access The Pirate Bay.

Tele 2, on the other hand, RIGHTLY points out that it should not be held liable for what content customers transmit over its networks and that it’s really a matter that needs to be sorted out between the IFPI and The Pirate Bay.

In a "Court Blog" put up by The Pirate Bay, the fallacy of the whole affair is made evident.

It reads:

Actually, the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI. Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter – our guess is that a lot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.

We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There’s no noticeable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.

Up 12%? So much for the effectiveness of site blocking.

Plus, the IFPI is an INTERNATIONAL organization. Why all the fuss with the Danes? Is Denmark illegally downloading more than its fair share, or is it just a better target country than others?

[via The Washington Post]