Court Ruled Czech Pirate Party’s Linking Sites Legal
https://sp-security.blogspot.com/2017/02/court-ruled-czech-pirate-partys-linking.html
Back
in 2011, the Czech branch of the Pirate Party started fighting against a
local anti-piracy firm by launching its own “pirate” portals in order
to draw fire from copyright owners. The case launched against the Pirate
Party in a criminal court in 2016 has now been dropped.
The
Pirate Party decided to declare a war on the local anti-piracy outfit
when the latter targeted a 16-year-old over posting links to infringing
materials. The party launched Tipnafilm.cz and another site indexing
5,800 titles under the slogan “Linking is not a Crime”, urging the
outfit to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous
claims at the Pirate Party. In response, the Anti-Piracy Union took the
Czech Pirates to court a year ago over their TV-focused site
Sledujuserialy.cz (I Watch TV Series).
Now the action against the party has been dropped – despite the fact that the service in question offered 1,205 videos without permission and stood accused of causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, the local court has stopped the prosecution in its tracks. This decision was made after consulting EU case law – in particular, the landmark GS Media ruling in the Netherlands. As a result, it was found the Pirates didn’t generate any revenue from providing links, so they didn’t break the law. According to the EU ruling, the operators of non-profit websites are not required to check the legality of provided hyperlinks.
Moreover, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union failed to provide evidence that it was authorized to act on behalf of the content creators whose rights were allegedly being infringed. The court also stated that the Czech Anti-Piracy Union could not act as the Internet Police and ask other actors to remove ant content, without providing evidence that they represent the rights of the copyright owners.
The Pirate Party believes that the criminal prosecution is proof that copyright holders stick to their old business models, which means that they are doing well, despite piracy. According to statistics, 13m people went to theaters in the Czech Republic in 2016, which is the highest number in the last 5 years. The Pirate Party says that if this is the result of piracy, the moviemakers should thank the pirates instead of suing them.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.
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Now the action against the party has been dropped – despite the fact that the service in question offered 1,205 videos without permission and stood accused of causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, the local court has stopped the prosecution in its tracks. This decision was made after consulting EU case law – in particular, the landmark GS Media ruling in the Netherlands. As a result, it was found the Pirates didn’t generate any revenue from providing links, so they didn’t break the law. According to the EU ruling, the operators of non-profit websites are not required to check the legality of provided hyperlinks.
Moreover, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union failed to provide evidence that it was authorized to act on behalf of the content creators whose rights were allegedly being infringed. The court also stated that the Czech Anti-Piracy Union could not act as the Internet Police and ask other actors to remove ant content, without providing evidence that they represent the rights of the copyright owners.
The Pirate Party believes that the criminal prosecution is proof that copyright holders stick to their old business models, which means that they are doing well, despite piracy. According to statistics, 13m people went to theaters in the Czech Republic in 2016, which is the highest number in the last 5 years. The Pirate Party says that if this is the result of piracy, the moviemakers should thank the pirates instead of suing them.
Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.
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SaM
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