Three years ago in 2014, The Court of The Hague handed down its decision in a long-running case which had previously forced two Dutch ISPs, Ziggo and XS4ALL, to block The Pirate Bay.
Ruling against local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which brought the case, the Court decided that a blockade would be ineffective and also restrict the ISPs’ entrepreneurial freedoms.
The Pirate Bay was unblocked while BREIN took its case to the Supreme Court, which in turn referred the matter to the EU Court of Justice for clarification. This June, the ECJ ruled that as a platform effectively communicating copyright works to the public, The Pirate Bay can indeed be blocked.
The ruling meant there were no major obstacles preventing the Dutch Supreme Court from ordering a future ISP blockade. Clearly, however, BREIN wanted a blocking decision more quickly. A decision handed down today means the anti-piracy group will achieve that in just a few days’ time.
The Hague Court of Appeal today ruled (Dutch) that the 2014 decision, which lifted the blockade against The Pirate Bay, is now largely obsolete.
“According to the Court of Appeal, the Hague Court did not give sufficient weight to the interests of the beneficiaries represented by BREIN,” BREIN said in a statement.
“The Court also wrongly looked at whether torrent traffic had been reduced by the blockade. It should have also considered whether visits to the website of The Pirate Bay itself decreased with a blockade, which speaks for itself.”
As a result, an IP address and DNS blockade of The Pirate Bay, similar to those already in place in the UK and other EU countries, will soon be put in place. BREIN says that four IP addresses will be affected along with hundreds of domain names through which the torrent platform can be reached.
The ISPs have been given just 10 days to put the blocks in place and if they fail there are fines of 2,000 euros per day, up to a maximum of one million euros.
“It is nice that obviously harmful and illegal sites like The Pirate Bay will be blocked again in the Netherlands,” says BREIN chief Tim Kuik.
“A very bad time for our culture, which was free to access via these sites, is now happily behind us.”
Today’s interim decision by the Court of Appeal will stand until the Supreme Court hands down its decision in the main case between BREIN and Ziggo / XS4ALL.
Looking forward, it seems extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court will hand down a conflicting decision, so we’re probably already looking at the beginning of the end for direct accessibility of The Pirate Bay in the Netherlands.
