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Posts Tagged ‘Foreign Rogue Websites’
February 21st, 2012 at 4:33 pm
U.K. Court Shows Rogue Website The Pirate Bay the Plank
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On Monday, a U.K. court took the wind out of The Pirate Bay’s sails via a ruling that may sink the popular file sharing website in England’s online seas.  Like other courts in other countries, that court ruled that The Pirate Bay is a copyright infringer because it actively encourages its 30 million worldwide users to engage in widespread theft.

The operators of The Pirate Bay — alongside many other illegal file sharing websites — don’t just passively violate laws.  Rather, they’re downright brazen in using online consumers as pawns for making millions of dollars from illicit activities – up to $3 million per month, according to expert testimony in this case.  The Pirate Bay again illustrates the toxic presence of bad actors out there on the Web who couldn’t care any less about whose property is stolen, whose jobs are threatened or even whose hard drives are being infected by online piracy.  The need to combat digital theft is therefore still very prevalent, and last month’s hysterical website blackout to protest proposed Congressional rogue sites legislation did absolutely nothing to address that issue.

The court will rule this summer on whether or not to block The Pirate Bay from U.K. Internet search results, but this decision comes on the heels of last summer’s blocking of a British content aggregator, Newzbin2, which also facilitated theft of copyrighted content en mass.  Which serves to show that site blocking is already underway in other advanced democratic nations, yet the Internet continues to thrive despite the false predictions of opponents of rogue website legislation.

It all goes to show that it’s time that we here in America also face the music.  Namely, that the U.S. remains behind in enforcing property rights, especially as relating to the online realm.  To be sure, the Internet should remain free within the bounds of law.  But it is not, should not, and cannot be lawless.  Outright theft does not become sacred simply because it occurs on the Internet, and the consequences are compounded when foreign criminal networks (e.g., MegaUpload) are turning illegal clicks into pocket-lining treasures.