Earlier this year, we noted, with surprise, that a Danish court had ordered Tele2, a large ISP, to block all access to The Pirate Bay website. This followed an earlier ruling requiring Tele2 to block access to AllofMp3.com. It's never been clear why an ISP should take on the responsibility of blocking access to a site, and Tele2 appealed the ruling. Unfortunately, it looks as though the company has lost. The Danish High Court has apparently sided with the IFPI, and says that, indeed, Tele2 must block The Pirate Bay. Of course, this is unlikely to matter. Whenever these blocks are ordered, there are always ways around them, and the attention from the blocks tends to alert more people to the site's existence.

A year and a half ago, we wrote about a Belgian court requiring an ISP to block all file sharing, and saying that after six months to implement a filtering solution, the ISP would be fined 2,500 euros per day that file sharing still occurred on its network. The court had been convinced by the IFPI that blocking all file sharing was as simple as installing the filtering software from the entertainment industry darling, Audible Magic. Of course, as has been seen over and over again, Audible Magic's "magic bullet" solution isn't particularly good, and certainly does very little to stop file sharing. Apparently, Belgian ISPs have finally been able to convince the judge of that fact, and he's reversed the original ruling, saying that the ISP in question is no longer subject to the fine. Apparently, even the recording industry lawyers had to admit that they misled the court over the efficacy of Audible Magic's filtering software.

It looks like the IFPI has won a lawsuit against a guy in Denmark, who was accused of sharing over 13,000 songs. From the brief description on TorrentFreak, it sounds like there was plenty of evidence pinning this directly to the guy (though, it's not clear if there's evidence that he actually shared the files, or simply made them available). Either way, what's more interesting is that the court has fined him approximately $24,400, or a bit less than $2 per song. As the article notes, the court estimated actual losses from the file sharing, and then used a "doubling up" method. So it sounds like the court said each file cost a little less than a dollar and the fine was double that. While the whole issue of suing people for file sharing still seems a bit absurd, you have to admit that approximately $2/song seems a lot more reasonable than the $750 to $150,000 per song that the RIAA pushes for in the US (and in the Jammie Thomas case it actually got $9250). Even so, the guy in Denmark is thinking about appealing the "doubling up" aspect, believing that even that fine is too high, as there's no evidence that his file sharing resulted in any reduction in sales for the recording industry.

We've already talked about how Italy's plan to have ISPs block all access to The Pirate Bay has failed by getting more people to visit the site. However, TorrentFreak points out another oddity in this whole ordeal. For the sites that did redirect The Pirate Bay, they pointed people to an IFPI-owned website. That seems highly questionable. Why should ISPs direct traffic intended for one private site to another private site -- allowing that second private organization to collect IP address info from folks intending to go to The Pirate Bay? If they really had to block the site, why not point them to a gov't explanation or, at the very least, a neutral site. Handing The Pirate Bay's traffic over to music industry lobbyists makes very little sense.

Last week, we noted how the IFPI had sent a nastygram to a music blogger, forcing him to take down a song -- even though the musicians behind the song wanted it posted. After the band contacted the IFPI, someone from the IFPI sent an apology to the site in a way that doesn't suggest it's really all that sorry:

IFPI was contacted by a member of the label who confirmed you were given permission to post the file on your site.

We were unaware of this agreement but now that it has been notified to us please feel free to upload the file.

Due to the volume of infringing content we find online there will be instances where legitimate files are picked up as infringing. We hope this matter shows that once we have the correct information we do not want to stop the promotion of music online.

In other words, "mistakes happen," and the responsibility isn't ours for making the mistake -- but it falls on the individual bloggers who may or may not be able to alert the musician in question and get them to call our legal dogs off. Of course, most laws concerning takedown notices require the folks issuing the takedown to properly express the wishes of the copyright holder. It would appear that the IFPI did not do that in this case, and an after-the-fact apology seems rather weak, given the weight that a legal threat from the IFPI could hold to an individual blogger without a legal team behind him.

When challenged on what they're doing, organizations like the RIAA and the IFPI will often claim that they're just trying to help musicians. That's obviously untrue, as they represent the record labels -- who have a long history of an antagonistic relationship with the musicians they work with. We're seeing more and more cases where this conflict is being made quite clear as the RIAA and IFPI attacks fan actions that the musicians in question would prefer be left alone. Reader Xavier sends in this example of a music blogger who received a cease and desist from the IFPI that not only contained numerous mistakes, but was disputed by the musician himself.

When the blogger received the cease-and-desist (which named the wrong song, but pointed to a specific URL on his blog), he sent the band a note via their MySpace page, to which the lead singer of the group responded:

"You definitely have my blessing as one of the 4 holders of the copyrights to that specific recording. I actually think this is bogus. Anyways thanks for posting that on your site. It was lovely to see it out there doing the rounds. We didnt take it to radio so your helping with the pollenation of the nation."

Of course, the blogger was (rightfully) worried that the IFPI might have his hosting company take down the site and/or charge him with a lawsuit, so he took down the song anyway. Nice to see the IFPI looking out for the best interests of the musicians, huh?

Just days after a US court ruled that selling promo CDs sent out by the recording industry is perfectly legal, Techdirt reader cram writes in to let us know of a DJ and music reviewer in London who was arrested for doing exactly the same thing. The only difference in this case was that the guy was selling the CDs before they had been released. Still, this seems positively ridiculous. As we had just noted, while some places do treat pre-release leaks differently, UK law does not. Furthermore, he's being charged with theft and money laundering. He was turned in by the IFPI, which apparently thinks that jailing the folks who promote your product is a good thing. What's not entirely clear from the article is whether this guy was sent these CDs by the labels in the first place. However, it does sound like he got them as part of his role as a DJ and reviewer, since the IFPI even mentions that "people who have access to pre-release music by virtue of their job," should watch out. If he really was "stealing" them, that's one thing -- but if the industry was sending them to him to promote the CDs, then hopefully the UK courts will react similarly to the US courts and quickly throw this out. Once they've sent him the CDs, they're his. They're no longer the record label's. That he was arrested for selling something willingly given to him to promote seems ridiculous.

I think that anyone who reads Techdirt on a regular basis would recognize that we're pretty harsh on the entertainment industry and the way it goes about its business. Yet, there seems to be an unrealistic expectation that we should obviously slam the entertainment industry for every move it makes -- and if not, we're somehow wrong. That's simply untrue. While, yes, it is easy to trash the incredibly dumb things the industry does all of the time, that doesn't mean you should automatically jump to conclusions about the entire industry. Last week, in writing about how a lead investigator on the case against The Pirate Bay had taken a job with Warner Brothers after the investigation concluded, I suggested this wasn't as ridiculous or "shocking" as some made it out to be. As long as there was no additional evidence of questionable activities, switching jobs isn't that surprising. The industry has a long history of hiring former police investigators and prosecutors for its anti-piracy activity. That, alone, shouldn't be considered strange or questionable -- but a lot of folks immediately assumed that something nefarious was up. In fact, one commenter even accused me of being on the take from Warner. Given just how frequently I've totally trashed Warner Music's activities (in just the last year alone), including the faux epiphany of boss Edgar Bronfman, this seems rather laughable.

However, it is important to recognize that not everything is a conspiracy theory, and not every move the industry makes is as ridiculous as it's made out to be by critics. Totally overreacting to these things doesn't help the case of those of us trying to help educate the industry on why their strategy of suing fans and blaming piracy for their own inability to adapt and grow is a problem. So, while I'm sure I'll get beaten up over it again, the latest report that an expert witness in the Danish lawsuit against The Pirate Bay used to work at the IFPI still doesn't seem particularly shocking or troublesome. TorrentFreak, who normally has excellent coverage, continually paints this news as "shocking." However, I just don't see it. It's not surprising that a guy who used to work on IFPI investigations would go on to work at an anti-piracy company. And, just because he does so, it doesn't mean that he's obviously biased on their side (I certainly don't think fondly of all of my ex-employers). The simple fact is that any expert witness has a bias. They're hired to help support one side of the case. So, of course he's going to present the IFPI's case in the best light. That's what he's paid to do -- and the court should take that into account. The fact that he used to work for the IFPI seems rather meaningless.

The folks behind the Pirate Bay certainly aren't ones to shy away from a fight. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. The latest is that they're demanding compensation from the IFPI for downtime associated with the IFPI's successful efforts to force Danish ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay says it will ask for a "reasonable" sum, rather than an extraordinary amount as is typical of the entertainment industry. It also says it will use any money it gets from the IFPI to fund Danish artists who want to give away their works online. While the guys at the Pirate Bay reasonably complain that the entire lawsuit between the IFPI and Danish ISPs never involved The Pirate Bay or gave the site a chance to make its own argument (despite being entirely about the site), this request for compensation may be pushing the boundaries a bit -- especially considering that even The Pirate Bay folks have admitted that the ban eventually resulted in more traffic. Perhaps they should send some money to the IFPI to thank them for all that "free" advertising.

There's been a huge lobbying campaign going on throughout much of the world to get local governments to put pressure on ISPs to require them to kick those accused of file sharing off of the internet. It had been worrisome that these efforts actually seemed to be getting some traction in both France and the UK despite vehement opposition from many people. It appears that the opposition has started to get its point of view across. The EU Parliament has now rejected a plan to criminalize file sharing and to implement a "three strikes and you're off the internet" policy. The vote itself isn't binding, but suggests how the EU Parliament feels. While France has already put in place such a law, there was some feeling that France would push to make similar laws enforced European-wide. This vote should put a damper on those plans.