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Digital Legal
Finnish Supreme Court allows web-block to stay in place
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 31 October 2012
Web-blocking continues to spread around Europe, as the content industries seek to force internet service providers to block access to copyright infringing websites.
Following injunctions forcing net firms to block The Pirate Bay in the UK, Netherlands and Italy, the controversial file-sharing website will now be blocked in Finland, after the Finnish Supreme Court rejected a case by the ISP Elisa, which tried to have a Bay-blocking injunction overturned.
While ISPs across Europe have generally resisted and criticised efforts to make them police piracy online (unlike in the US, where a voluntary three-strikes-style system is in the works), few ISPs have actually fought web-block injunctions once they have been passed by a court. But Elisa hoped it could force a rethink after a Finnish copyright group, supported by the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry, requested a Bay-block in the country’s courts.
Of course web-blocks on copyright grounds remain controversial even as they become more common, with critics arguing that such blocks constitute censorship, and that, anyway, they are always circumventable by anyone who knows what they are doing.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Virgin Media’s blocks against The Pirate Bay and file-sharing community Newzbin temporarily fell down last weekend, according to Torrentfreak, when users could suddenly reconnect to the controversial websites, presumably because of a technical error.
