While website blocking has become a common occurrence in many European countries, it has proven to be a rather cumbersome and slow-moving process in the Netherlands.
Seven years ago, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force local ISP Ziggo to block The Pirate Bay. Rival ISP XS4ALL later joined in on the action, which is still ongoing.
Initially, the court decided that blocking all subscribers went too far but BREIN wasn’t satisfied and took the case to a full trial, which they won.
Both Ziggo and XS4ALL filed subsequent appeals, arguing that the blockade was ineffective and denied subscribers’ free access to information, an argument which later proved successful.
The case eventually moved to the Supreme Court, which referred some questions to the European Court of Justice. The highest European court ruled that there are no legal obstacles to have a site like The Pirate Bay blocked, and now the ball is back with the Supreme Court again.
BREIN, however, has grown impatient and doesn’t want to wait until the Supreme Court comes to a final decision, which isn’t expected to happen before 2018. To speed things up, the anti-piracy group wants a new preliminary injunction at a lower court.
A new hearing on the Pirate Bay blockade is currently scheduled to take place at a court in The Hague early September, Tweakers reports.
BREIN director Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak that the preliminary injunction will only be valid until the final verdict is handed down.
“We are requesting a preliminary injunction until the final decision in the procedural trial, now pending before the Dutch Supreme Court. After that, the final blocking decision applies,” Kuik says.
Kuik stresses that its action is supported by the recent EU Court of Justice ruling which clarified that The Pirate Bay facilitates copyright infringement, as well as an earlier ruling from 2014, which confirmed that EU Internet service providers can be required to block access to such sites.
Based on the second ruling, pirate site blockades are warranted if they make it harder for the public to access these sites. This is certainly the case here, according to Kuik, who refers to blockades in thirteen other EU countries.
In addition, the EU court stressed that blocking injunctions must be proportional, so as not to unnecessarily stop subscribers from lawfully accessing information.
Responding to the news, a Ziggo spokesman told Tweakers that BREIN is running ahead of itself. The provider is of the opinion that they have to wait for the Supreme Court to make a final decision before taking any further action.
