Swedish Court Refuses MPAA Request To Shutdown OpenBitTorrent

[admin]

After getting several victories in the courts, the MPAA has finally met with some opposition, and this time in Sweden, the location of their highest profile victory.

Lawyers representing Hollywood studios had wanted Portlane, the web host of OpenBitTorrent to shutdown the public tracker, which is now even more popular after the closing of The Pirate Bay's own in house trackers. Lawyers had claimed that Portlane was itself contributing to copyright infringement by allowing OBT to remain open.

However, the court refused Hollywood's demands and stated that in order for Portlane to be contributing to copyright infringement, it has to do a lot more than simply providing a service to the website. Studio lawyers also claimed that OBT is simply The Pirate Bay's tracker with a name change, since they claim it is owned by one of TPB's co-founders.

A Portlane spokesperson said Portlane was happy with the decision and made the following statement:

We are happy with the court’s decision. It is indeed the only correct decision. We as an ISP should neither act or get the task to police the Internet

More:

http://torrentfreak.com/court-refuses-to-order-shutdown-of-openbittorrent-091202/

[dr_ml422]

It'll never end like you stated many times already, even in your Blog. Also the price for some of the stuff that's on the torrents is exactly 1 if not the main reason they're there. IE: Windows 7. I'm glad for Portlane's victory in as much as no one should be coerced to enforce anything because of someone else's passing the Buc.