Denmark has taken up the fight against the freedom of Internet traffic. In a recent court decision (in Danish here) the court has decided that the Internet Service Provider must prevent users carrying out illegal activities.
The background is the controversial Russian site AllOfMp3.com (more info about background controversies on wikipedia). The Russian company claims to follow Russian law while the IFPI claim that they have not paid for any western labels. In addition to this the music is not protected by DRM and can be freely transferred to others.
The Danish court has found that since the music is downloaded is actually copied onto the ISPâ??s equipment then they are guilty of copyright violation. The court has not seen this as aiding someone elseâ??s copyright violation but find that the ISP is directly responsible for carrying out the actions.
ISP liability for the actions of their customers has a long background and basically takes three positions. The ISP is totally innocent in the same way as the post-office is innocent of a blackmail letter it delivers. The ISP is guilty since without their equipment the crime could never have taken place. And thirdly the more complex: it depends. This last case must answer questions such as:
Did the ISP have knowledge of the actions?
Did the ISP take actions to prevent it?
Would it be possible (technically, economically, politically) to take action?
The result of this is that the ISP has been protected by its own strategic ignorance.
But now the Danish court argues that the ISP is not contributing or aiding crime (which in itself is a questionable stance as the questions above indicate) but is guilty of the crime itself.
The court writes
â??Retten finder … at ogsÃ¥ den flyktige og tilfældige fiksering af musikværket i form av elektroniske signaler, som foretages i de forskellige routers under datapakkernes transmission via internettet, er omfattet af ophovsretslovens § 2.â??
Basically: that the consequences of millisecond that it takes for the music to zoom through the companies routers is, in fact, the creation of a copy of digital music. This is done without the permission of the copyright holder.
Wow! The Danes have really begun something here. First of all you can hardly read, listen or see coherent information while it flies through the router. Since information online is mixed up in many packets and mixed together with other packets and all the little packets can take different routes to their final destination.
IF the Danes were right then I should be able to sue the Danish ISP for copying all my emails which happen to go through Denmark without permission.
Another problem is that the Danish court has ordered this whole problem to be resolved by blocking all traffic from the Russian site. This implementation is both unpoductive and dangerous. It is unproductive since those who want can still download – site blocking is a minor impediment. It is dangerous since it shows a lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Faith in blocking only leads to the false impression that something is being done.
(via Oscar Swartz, Copyriot)
