Pirate Party Refuses to Shutdown Pirate Bay Proxy, Faces Lawsuit

Pirate Party Refuses to Shutdown Pirate Bay Proxy, Faces Lawsuit:
In January, a Dutch court ruled that Ziggo, the largest ISP in the country, and competitor XS4ALL, must block access to The Pirate Bay.
Both ISPs appealed the verdict, but in the meantime affected subscribers have plenty of ways to route around the blockades. In the space of a few days hundreds of individuals setup proxy websites that allow customers of the ISPs to continue using The Pirate Bay.
Countering this move, local anti-piracy outfit BREIN obtained an injunction from the Court of The Hague which instructed the proxy site tpb.dehomies.nl to shut down or face a 1000 euros a day fine. The group is now using this injunction to press other site owners to do the same.
Last week the local Pirate Party also received a letter from BREIN, demanding the shutdown of their Pirate Bay proxy site hosted at tpb.piratenpartij.nl. However, unlike the site owners that were previously contacted by the group, the Pirate Party is not caving in. They would rather fight the case in court.
Today the Party informed BREIN that the proxy site will stay online. To show that The Pirate Bay can be a useful communication tool the Pirate Party sent the letter through a torrent file, hosted on the BitTorrent site at the center of the dispute.
“The demands are ridiculous,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak.
“A private lobbying organization should not be allowed to be the censor of the Dutch internet. We were also amazed to find an ex-parte decision attached, threatening Dutch minors with €1000 per day fines for operating their proxy. If we would have yielded, their trick would immediately be played out against numerous other private citizens.”
According to the Pirate Party chairman BREIN’s efforts are not just going too far, they are useless too.
“There are a plethora of proxy sites on the internet. On almost any them TPB can by reached, even with a single URL. That’s not even mentioning the ways you can get to TPB if you’re willing to put in more effort than saving a single URL. If this keeps going there will be no Internet left by the time BREIN has achieved its goal of making TPB inaccessible.”
“In their self-righteous zealousness they have brought substantial damage to the free and open Internet,” Poot said.
While the legality of The Pirate Bay and reverse proxy sites is for the courts to decide, it is clear that blocking the website hurts legitimate artists as well.
In BREIN’s demand letter the anti-piracy group pasted a screenshot of the proxy site showing the Pirate Bay homepage. But ironically enough, instead of the iconic logo it showed one of the many promotional campaigns the torrent site is running for independent artists.
The Pirate Party believes that the broad censorship BREIN is pushing for goes too far. And although they are not delighted to face thousands of euros in fines, they see it as their duty to fight back in court.
“Unless someone calls them on their tactics, they will be allowed to continue those tactics indefinitely. Yielding does not make the problem go away. We would preferred to tackle this issue in parliament, where it belongs. However, if we have a chance to stop this ex-parte from being reused again and again, we ought to grab it. We’ll need serious donations, though…,” Poot told us.
More news about the upcoming lawsuit is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. BREIN was asked to comment on the issue as well, but the group kindly declined.
Source: Pirate Party Refuses to Shutdown Pirate Bay Proxy, Faces Lawsuit