Today, the Court of Appeals of The Hague rendered its judgment in the appeal of internet service providers XS4ALL and Ziggo against anti-piracy organization BREIN. In first instance, the District Court allowed Brein’s claims: an IP-block and DNS-block. Purpose of the block was to prevent the subscribers of the providers to access The Pirate Bay-website.
The Court of Appeals overturned the ruling, since the providers could show that the block had not been effective since the first ruling. In applying the case law from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Court of Appeal held that an access provider is not under an obligation to take measures that are disproportional and/or ineffective.
A win for us Dutch people, and hopefully, a ruling possible cases in other European countries can cite.
I don’t really know if I’d call this much of a win, since it basically amounts to ‘It doesn’t work, so we wont make you do it.’
This implies if a viable and workable censorship solution could be found, it could be upheld. At least that’s how I’m reading it.
You know, I quite like the idea of rulings being overturned because they don’t work. In fact, I’d go so far to say it’s the best reason to overturn something.
Too many things stick around because it’s a Good Idea(tm), even if it isn’t really a good idea.
Can you think of a few rules in our society that don’t work but are still good ideas? Do you think overturning those rules because they don’t work is a good thing?
Edited 2014-01-29 00:04 UTC
A lot of economic policies I think are Good Ideas(tm) but don’t actually work. And I’m talking about the assumption that things in Free Markets(tm) magically works itself out.
A lot of libertarians think the War on Drugs should be stopped on those grounds. Not that I care about the whole drugs thing because I don’t think people should take them any way.
And I also think the original ideas behind copyright and patents were Good Ideas(tm), but now they have stopped working the way they were supposed to and needs to be overturned.
Ok
I find it hard to understand people that think the war on drugs is a good thing. But you are anti drugs? Don’t you ever get a headache?
Agreed but those were easy rules that don’t work.
What about all the laws that are violated each day by millions of people? Only a fraction of those people are caught so it is obvious they don’t work or are at least as inefficient as censoring a webpage to keep people from downloading stuff.
Please, those aren’t the drugs we’re talking about, nor the target of the War. My problem with the anti-War on Drugs is the fanciful wish that people won’t abuse drugs if they were legal or that it will somehow stop violent gangs from making money from drug supply because of economic scarcity. We have to remember there was a time when opium was legal and its effects on society, even without the gang violence, was destroying economies. My people even had to fight a war with the British because of opium addiction draining the economy. The British themselves had to ban it and they forced China to accept opium trade because they know from experience how easy it is to ruin others while benefiting from it, all the while being legal. So I say we have empirical proof that legalizing or decriminalizing drugs won’t stop that from happening.
I’m open to the idea that the way the War on Drugs is being carried out – jailing the addicts instead of going after the suppliers – is ineffective and the cause of the problems with the War. Unfortunately all the libertarians I encounter can’t think of any other solution than to legalize/decriminalize (possibly because the drugs have taken away their creative thinking ability).
But as an aside, no I don’t take anything even for a headache. I don’t take any painkillers at all. Getting aches and pains is natural and are a symptom that you have some bad habits. Taking painkillers, instead of correcting those habits, just makes the symptoms prolonged and worse in the long run. Painkillers only really should be used for and after surgery and other such medical treatments.
Yes, I agree with that. Hence my original post.
Edited 2014-01-29 01:21 UTC
Not sure about Europe, but in the USA we appear to have gone from legal to criminal, and then to absurdly criminal. What we haven’t tried with recreational drugs to my knowledge is decriminal, e.g., fines for use in public, social reproof, that sort of thing.
But that is the approach we’ve used with cigarettes, and smoking is at an all-time low. I’d much rather try that approach with marijuana (for example) than tossing a young person in jail for 10 years for one joint.
I’ve never known a libertarian who actually used drugs – though maybe I don’t know enough libertarians yet. Most libertarians I know are intellectual theorists who love to debate, and recreational drugs get in the way of the arguments.
I lean distinctly libertarian myself, though they would never claim me – I like a modest government-funded safety net, for example, and am quite pro-defense, among other political sins. I wouldn’t go near recreational drugs, though, even with the president on a legalization crusade, since my only marketable skills revolve around my brain.
But, since your thinking skills are unimpaired, what “third way” (other than the current “war on drugs” or decriminalization) are you proposing? Honest question.
Spoken like a true young whippersnapper ™ who has no chronic conditions. “If you just lived better, you wouldn’t have inherited degenerative arthritis” is a really stupid medical theory, no offense intended.
Marijuana is one of the libertarian mainstays.
Take out the suppliers and dealers. Stop jailing the users, especially those caught with extremely small amounts. Then there’s the whole positive happiness-cult in the West, especially the US, where if you’re not 100% happy all the time, something is wrong with you and therefore you have to take something for it.
So fucking sorry I left out all possible medical exemptions in a post on a technology forum, Your Highness. I guess nothing has ever slipped your mind in your whole life ever. And even if you do have chronic conditions, it’s still not a good idea to take painkillers constantly, because you develop a tolerance to them. Or is that just another stupid medical theory?
I could point out a lot of various kinds of aches and pains that don’t really have anything to do with habits, like e.g. the loose vertebrae in my back, or the tendency for migraines that runs in our family. While I agree that one shouldn’t be taking painkillers or such all the time it’s just ridiculous to try to claim that all ailments are just a result of bad habits.
Amen (to all of the above) Kwan_e. Amen.
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From what I understand, it’s worked out pretty well in my country (Australia). There’s just something wrong with the way you guys are running it. Or rather, the way the ghost of Ayn Rand is running it.
Bullshit! I’m from Australia and in case you’ve been living under a rock; you’d have noticed we’re more screwed than what’s let on. What happened to all our car makers? Where’s our manufacturing base gone? Why is our housing the most expensive in the world and our personal debt to GDP ready to blow its top? Just to mention a few.
And you agree that some should be able to create money out of thin air and profit before that money inflates the price of everything for everyone else except the 1%.
Wait till interest rates start climbing again as is being predicted. Keating’s recession we had to have will look like a boon compared to the shit coming down the pipe.
I thought the Dutch housing market was expensive and messed up.
Until an Australian friend of mine tried to find a house. The prices she quoted to me made my brains hurt.
Yes, Thom and a damn lot of people here got toxic sub prime loans as in the US. And before they relaxed the lending rules a lot even took out loans to pay down a deposit to get their mortgages. We’re a ticking time bomb, the resources boon we had is over and we in the biggest debt of our history. And we did all this while the country was making a motsa, go figure?
Calm down.
And yet we’re still doing better than the rest of the world. The rest of the world would like to have our problems.
You’ve fallen for the logical fallacy that because we’re “screwed”, and we currently have a central banking system, therefore the two are correlated. You may remember the world is still teetering from what happened half a decade ago, which had nothing to do with the RBA.
How is that the fault of a central banking system?
I’m pretty sure I DIDN’T quote the fiat currency part of your post. So no, I DON’T agree.
You’ve fallen for the logical fallacy that because I disagreed with one part of your post, I must therefore disagree with all of it, regardless of which bit I actually quoted.
And the point of stating the bleeding obvious is…?
A question from the uninformed wishing to be informed: To what extent can European countries with very similar but separate legal systems cite cases from other jurisdictions?
To the extend that you can point at another country and say: “they are doing it why don’t we?”
The court heavily relies on EU law and EU jurisprudence to form its conclusion. Basically it checks if the ISPs are breaching copyright themselves, which is not the case, then concludes on EU law that it has to balance the rights of copyright holders for their copyright to be protected against the freedom of running a business the way you like. Basically BREIN has a right to enforce copyright, but XS4All has a right to operate an ISP that is principially against censoring portions of the internet.
If the blocking of TPB is ineffective, the right of XS4All to run its business the way it does (being an ISP that is principially against censoring) is considered more important than the right of BREIN to protect copyrights with ineffective measures.
Now what can happen in other jurisdictions, is that people can ask their courts to look at this case. As the Dutch court heavily relied on EU law and jurisprudence, the reasoning of the Dutch court shoudl hold for other EU countries. Judges in EU countries are free to disagree with the Dutch court, after all they are independend countries. But in general courts, when decisions are based on EU law, try to be constent in interpretation with courts in other EU member countries. If they disagree it happens more often that they ask the EU Court of Justice for advise about interpretations, than that they simply do their own thing and make different decisions.
So yes, this decision is relevant for other EU countries.
Thanks for explaining.
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As it says, UK before I left for the south of Spain was pretty sensible (Spain going back Franco style now), everytime I hear anything on the news there is another oppressive law being pushed through.