14 DAY TRIAL // Iceland has now ordered a blockade on the world’s most popular torrent site – the Pirate Bay.
TorrentFreak reports that a music rights group has become the first organization to manage to force a copyright-focused website blockade in Iceland, a country that’s most often than not focused on giving everyone their right to freedom.
The District Court ruled that ISPs, including Vodafone, must now block The Pirate Bay, as well as Deildu, the largest private torrent site in Iceland.
This isn’t the first time that local copyright groups have tried to do away with The Pirate Bay. Last year, for instance, the groups protecting the interests of the music and the movie industries reported the site to the Icelandic police, but the case ended before it even started.
STEF (the equivalent of RIAA) and the SMAIS (the equivalent of the MPAA) have been trying to convince authorities that they need to block torrent sites for a long time now. The group has issued demands for local ISPs to block both The Pirate Bay and Deildu.net, the most popular private torrent tracker in the country.
“This action doesn’t go against freedom of expression as it aims to prevent copyright infringement and protect the rights and income of authors, artists and producers,” the rightsholders said.
Although changes to the Copyright Act in 2010 authorized injunctions against intermediaries, an initial lawsuit against ISPs was rejected on a procedural matter. Then, another effort ended up in STEF representing three out of four plaintiffs when the Supreme Court decided they only had the rights to claim injunctive relief.
A win for rightsholders
Eventually, this week, rightsholders finally achieved the ruling they had been hoping for after the Reykjavik District Court ordered an injunction to ISPs Vodafone and Hringdu which forces them to block several domains belonging to The Pirate Bay and Deildu.
“We will never reach a final victory in the battle so it makes sense for people to realize that it’s likely that new sites will spring up. However, following similar actions abroad visitor numbers to such sites have declined significantly, said Gudrun Bjork Bjarnadóttir, STEF Director of Policy.
The list of domains that will no longer be accessible includes thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sx and thepiratebay.org, as well as deildu.net and deildu.com.
While the order may have been given, it doesn’t mean that the battle has been won. In fact, there are plenty of reverse proxy sites for the Pirate Bay, while Deildu has already announced a new domain – Iceland.pm. Since these are not listed in the court order, they’re not getting blocked. Furthermore, there’s also a wide range of VPN tools and other methods that can be used to circumvent the blockade.