Block P2P, Belgian court tells ISP

Stephen Withers
Friday, 06 July 2007 02:58

Your IT - Home IT

Scarlet, one of Belgium's largest ISPs, has been given six months to block the use of peer-to-peer networks to exchange music without the copyright holder's consent. The Court of First Instance of Brussels said its appointed expert had identified seven ways Scarlet could block or filter such traffic, and their technical and automatic character means the ISP would not be monitoring traffic in a sense that would affect customers' privacy.

It seems that Audible Magic's technology was one of the methods nominated by the court-appointed expert. It offers a device called the CopySense Network Appliance which the company claims "is the only solution that can identify and block illegal sharing of copyrighted files while allowing other legitimate P2P uses to continue."

According to a statement issued by SABAM (The Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers which brought the case against Scarlet and its predecessor Tiscali), the court did not accept the defence's arguments concerning privacy, secrecy of correspondence, freedom of expression, or that supervising P2P traffic would be contrary to other legislation.

"Moreover, the court considers that filtering and blocking software are not dealing as such with any personal data and that a blocking measure has a purely technical and automatic character, as the ISP is not playing any active role in the blocking or filtering," said SABAM officials.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry welcomed the court's decision. Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said "This is an extremely significant ruling which bears out exactly what we have been saying for the last two years - that the internet’s gatekeepers, the ISPs, have a responsibility to help control copyright-infringing traffic on their networks. The court has confirmed that the ISPs have both 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 other countries in Europe and around the world."

If Scarlet does not comply with the ruling within six months, it faces penalties of €2500 per day.

The ruling is said to set a precedent in the European Union.