Belgian, Italian Cases Unsettle Online Piracy Fight

The first case dates to 2004, when the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers sued to require Tiscali to install filters to fight P2P copyright infringement (WID July 6/07 p1). The Court of First Instance gave Scarlet six months to install the technology or face daily 2,500-euro fines. It said Audible Magic filter technology could tag songs registered in the Society repertory.

Scarlet tried Audible Magic, which didn’t work, nor did other technologies, said Gracy Ramont, a lawyer for the ISP. Last week, Scarlet told the court that it can’t stop all illegal P2P transmissions on its network and so can’t comply with the judgment, she said. The Society, meanwhile, suspended its request for daily fines while the case is on appeal, she said. The Belgian group reportedly acknowledged misleading the court but acted in good faith, since it had relied on a court expert’s endorsement of Audible Magic. The Society didn’t respond to a request for comment.

An Audible Magic pilot on Scarlet’s network to test the technology with real network traffic was interrupted by the companies “because of a divergence in deployment methodology in light of the requirements imposed on Scarlet by the legal case,” said Mike Edwards, Audible Magic head of European operations. The technology has a “proven track record” with ISPs in restricting access to illegal content and in building value-added content delivery platforms, Edwards said. That the company’s content-identification technology sees use by Microsoft, Sony, Google, Fox Interactive and many others “speaks for itself,” he said.

The music industry is waiting to see if the court buys Scarlet’s claim of not being able to stop illegal file- swapping, said a spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The group maintains that Scarlett can do it, he said.

Meanwhile, Pirate Bay’s lawyers await a formal ruling reversing a decree ordering ISPs to block access to the file- swapping site and to redirect traffic to a site of the music federation. The order, rendered Aug. 1 in a criminal proceeding, was set aside, but the decision’s legal basis is still unknown, said Giovanni Battista Gallus, a defense team member. ISPs were directed to remove the block immediately, he said. Gallus said he expects the decision this week.

Pirate Bay appealed on multiple grounds, Gallus said. One was that Italian judges lacked jurisdiction because the Web site was not hosted there and no Italians were involved, and a second was that there was no judicial basis for requiring Italian providers to filter for copyright infringement, he said. And Pirate Bay denied hosting copyrighted works, he said.

The final judgment could have an “important effect” if the tribunal rules on the case on its merits, Gallus said. But the case is at the indictment phase and the reversal is a preliminary ruling. The music federation fully expects an appeal by the prosecutor in the Court of Cassation, its spokesman said.

Pirate Bay also faces a trial in Denmark, said network administrator Peter Sunde. The federation sued an ISP there for allowing access to the P2P site, “which is totally crazy,” he told us. All Danish ISPs and the Chamber of Commerce have joined to fight the case, which they call very dangerous for e-commerce, he told an Italian interviewer last week. The only other countries blocking access to Pirate Bay are Kuwait, Turkey and China, a list than speaks for itself, he said.