p2pnet - rss feed: Brein, Thijm and pedophiles
p2pnet.net News View:- It’s sad when lawyers produce arguments lacking any and all legal or procedural merit: instead, they’re just a plain old scare tactics.
Using pedophiles as a reason to not divulge ID’s is beyond me. But it does it point up the glaring problem facing the legal systems whch are colliding with technology.
It also shows that in civil or criminal cases, when it comes to the Internet and technology, all gloves are off.
Scare Tactics
Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, defending ISP’s, hinted that if Brein was granted access to ID’s in this court proceeding, it could open the way for pedophiles to get ID’s on kids.
Well, pedophiles won’t go to court to get kids’ names and addresses. Not even in The Netherlands.
But I can see where Thijm was going with this. However, his eloquent style and boyish looks will only get him so far. To persuade the judge to acknowledge the complexity of the subject, he needed a little more bang and in all, it took Thijm almost three hours of showmanship to plea his case and to get his point across.
Legal Tactics
Thijm needed to get this case out of speed trial mode and into a more stable full proceeding.
Dutch courts have the option to administer quick rulings in “urgent” cases. If parties can show urgency, the courts can decide quickly, knowing they can always fall back on a full procedural hearing of the case.
However, if Brein gets the ID’s during the quick hearing, a full hearing would be useless and would be too little to late. By the time courts have reversed their decision to give out ID’s, Brein would have already prosecuted most of the 32 file-sharers it’s going after.
Focus
But let’s not lose perspective, here.This is still only about bits and bytes compiled into song or film.
Let’s not put music and put movie lovers in the same sentence as child molesters.
Let’s not stoop to the level of industry propaganda.
For the record, there’s no link between 9/11 and bootlegged cd’s no matter what the Hollywood Reporter implies.
The focus remains: Is there or is there not a legal basis to demand names and addresses from an ISP by a civil party for the purposes of a law suit?
Know your enemy
Let’s also not forget that these are two industries battling it out to get leverage.
Both sides have as their primary objective the protection of revenue, not the protection of consumer privacy.
One industry has content and the other needs content to entice consumers.
Once again: consumers are dead center.
Raymond Blijd - fk2w
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