Belgian court says p2p filter doesn’t work

Posted on 28 Oct 2008 at 12:11

A Belgian court has ruled that software designed to filter out unauthorised p2p downloads is unreliable.

The court overturned a previous ruling against Belgian ISP Scarlet, which had faced fines totalling €750,000 for failing to comply with an order to filter out material that infringed copyright.

Last year, following successful litigation by Belgian rights society SABAM, Scarlet was ordered to deploy filtering software developed by Audible Magic that purports to be able to identify copyright material.

But Scarlet appealed, arguing that filtering unauthorised content was technically impossible and - specifically - that the Audible Magic software did not work.

The Brussels court agreed and Scarlet will no longer have to pay the accumulated fines.

Scarlet is now appealing against the wider judgement that it has an obligation to block illegal p2p activity, regardless of the method it uses. The ISP claims that violates Belgian laws prohibiting phone tapping.

The ruling could have implications outside Belgium, as other countries, notably the UK, consider how to reduce the volume of content that is swapped over p2p networks.

Audible Magic has been asked to comment.

Author: Simon Aughton

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