Reopens it Filmakerz. The Court of Appeal in Rome, Italy, has agreed to lift a ban imposed on a pirated website by distribution companies Internet of the country.
Filmakerz.org will return to its members' browsers after the court αποφάσισε ότι η απαγόρευση ήταν υπερβολικά μεγάλη. Το δικαστήριο αλλάζοντας την απόφαση του πρωτόδικου, πρότεινε ότι θα απαγορεύσει συγκεκριμένες διευθύνσεις URL, και όχι όλο το domain. Βέβαια η τελευταία απόφαση αναφέρει και το εξής σημαντικό: Ότι οι περιοχές που παραβιάζουν πνευματικά δικαιώματα θα πρέπει να έχουν και κάποιο κέρδος.
The first decision by the Rome Prosecutor's Office last month banned access to Filmakerz.org, along with 45 others websites.
While most of these sites avoided going to court, Filmakers.org took the case to the Court of Appeal. To relieve his administrators, the judges changed the sentence, saying it was too long.
The case is particularly important as it creates a basis for other websites that they wanted but did not dare to oppose the law. Fulvio Sarzana, who was the advocate of the site's defense, believes the decision was a blow to the increasing efforts of authorities and copyright owners to censor the Internet.
The decision contains two important provisions, he says. Most importantly, the prosecutor should provide evidence of a speculative incentive to issue an exclusion order.
The second is that websites that contain legitimate content should not be totally excluded.
This notion has been brought up many times in recent years, notably when copyright holders sent DMCA notices to companies such as Google, requesting the removal of the homepage of illegal websites and not the removal of illegal links leading to it.
The Filmakerz.org site will be available to the Italians soon, as the decision has already been sent to local ISPs.
It's unclear so far if other sites will try to cash in for Filmakerz.org's success, but chances are they're going to win if they do. It depends, of course, on how the original layout was formulated, and if you're still going to be bother to try.
