ISP ORDERED TO BLOCK MUSIC PIRACY - Belgian court rules service provider must monitor its network for illegal P2P activity
In a landmark case, a Belgian ISP has been ordered to block or filter out traffic on its network that it thinks is copyright infringing material. A Belgian court ordered Scarlet, formerly part of Tiscali, to put in place the “technical instruments” to do this within six months. The case was brought by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers & Publishers (SABAM) in an attempt to smote music and movie piracy.
This is believed to be the first time a European court has ordered an ISP to block traffic. Until now, ISPs have been treated like telcos and postal organisations in that they may be a conduit for information but cannot be held responsible for that content of the information.
Conflict in law
However, there may be some conflict between the European Copyright Directive, which the ruling in Belgium was adhering to, and the European Ecommerce Directive, which states that ISPs are not generally responsible for the activity of their customers. However, the Belgian court has argued that filtering illegal content does not mean that the ISPs need to monitor all traffic or identify culprits. The UK’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) is opposed to the Scarlet ruling. “Any kind of censorship of the internet has to be at the government level. ISPs are not law enforcement,” said an ISPA spokesperson.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) hopes that other countries will adopt the ruling. IFPI chairman John Kennedy said: “The internet’s gatekeepers, the ISPs, have a responsibility to help control copyright-infringing traffic on their networks. The [Belgian] court has confirmed that the ISPs have a legal responsibility and the technical means to tackle piracy. This is a decision that we hope will set the mould for government policy and for courts in Europe and around the world.”
The IFPI estimates that, in 2006, 20 billion illegal files were shared on P2P networks, 20 times the number of legal music downloads. As a proportion of internet traffic, P2P has dominated HTTP traffic for the last four years.