Source: https://www.timelex.eu/en/blog/iaps-can-be-obliged-to-block-the-pirate-bay
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 20:46:03+00:00

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On June 14th, 2017 the European Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed that Internet Access Providers (IAPs) can be obliged to block the domain names and IP addresses of the online sharing platform The Pirate Bay (TPB).
This question has already been raised in several national proceedings in various EU countries and was now finally addressed by the CJEU in the preliminary ruling of Stichting Brein v Ziggo BV and XS4ALL Internet BV.
Stichting Brein, a Dutch foundation that safeguards the interests of copyright holders, wanted Ziggo and XS4LL Internet BV, both IAPs, to block the domain names and IP addresses of TPB. According to Stichting Brein, most of the works shared on TPB were copyright-protected works and by managing this platform, TPB infringed the copyright of the copyright holders.
Given the foregoing, the Court of Justice first had to determine whether TPB, as an online sharing platform, indeed infringes the copyright of copyright holders and should therefore be blocked by the IAPs. Directive 2001/29 (the so-called “Copyright Directive”) reserves some exclusive rights for the copyright holders, such as, the right of communication to the public (article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29).
Is there an infringement of the right of communication to the public when a website operator makes it possible to find files containing copyright-protected works, which are offered for sharing on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, by means of indexation of the metadata relating to those protected works, and by providing a search engine for these metadata?
In answering this question, the CJEU took four parameters into consideration.
First of all, the CJEU emphasised the deliberate nature of the intervention and the indispensable role played by TPB. TPB had full knowledge of the consequences of its intervention. Moreover, the Court reasons, had TPB not intervened, the users of TPB would not have been able to enjoy the broadcast work or would be able to do so only with difficulty. As such, this intervention should be considered as an act of communication.
Secondly, the CJEU asserted that for the communication to be to the public, it should reach an indeterminate number of potential viewers, which it considered to be the case for the P2P sharing platform of TPB since the works were made available on the computers of the network users in a way that any other user could download them.
Thirdly, the protected work must be communicated using specific technical means, different from those previously used by the copyright holder. Or otherwise, the protected works must be communicated to a new public - meaning a public that was not taken into account by the copyright holders when they authorised the initial communication of their work to the public. In casu the court held that there is indeed a communication to a new public.
Finally, the CJEU added that the profit-making nature of a communication is also relevant. It was not disputed that TPB generated considerable advertising revenues. For that reason, the making available and management of an online sharing platform, such as TPB, constitutes a communication to the public, within the meaning of article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29.
It is important to stress that the criteria used by the CJEU are not new. In its Svensson and others v Retriever Sverige AB judgment it applied the same criteria to determine that hyperlinking constitutes an act of communication. However, in that case, the Court ruled that the requirement of communication to a ‘new public’ was not fulfilled.
The criteria used by the CJEU are possibly inspired by the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime which entered into force in 2004. In this Convention, copyright infringements can be criminally charged if the infringement is committed wilfully, on a commercial scale by means of a computer system.
Smooth sailing from now on?
Previously, IAP’s have been forced to block TPB by the national courts of Belgium, France Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK. In Sweden, the founders of TPB and a Swedish businessman who through his business sold services to the site were sentenced to a fine and imprisonment.
The question can be raised whether obliging IAP’s to block the Pirate Bay and condemn the founders of TPB is the right approach to protect the rights of copyright holders in the most appropriate and effective way. Only a few days after the Antwerp Court of Appeals ruled that IAPs had to block TPB in 2011, the domain names depiraatbaai.be and baiedespirates.be, the Dutch and French translation of TPB, were registered. Moreover, using one of the many proxy sites, or going through a VPN connection can easily circumvent a block by IAPs.
It is clear that this judgment alone will not keep the pirates at bay.
 CJEU 13 Februari 2014, nr. C-466/12, ECLI:EU:C:2014:76.

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