Blocking Measures and Proportionality; Freedom to Conduct a Business, Freedom of Information and Balancing of Interests

Abstract

The Pirate Bay, TPB, originally a Swedish entity (or grouping), is by now a notorious and world “famed” service, working on the internet to provide access for the public mainly to attractive movie house films, video and pop hit music, phenomena surely protected by copyright and related rights; however, TPB does so without seeking out any permission from right holders for the dissemination that it in fact accomplishes from TPB platforms.1 TPB is basically worked out as a homepage, which provides an interface for users, as well as search and database functions accessible by any of its domain-, web- or IP-addresses or proxy services. In the case analyzed below, TPB also provided on its homepage torrent files, the possibility to download those torrent files accessible from the TPB addresses, and, further, a tracker function, consisting of bit torrent racks accessible from TPB addresses.