Andre Yoskowitz
12 May 2008 0:38
Iceland's most popular torrent tracker, torrent.is has announced that it has won another court decision and the site will reopen next week, May 16th.
In late March the original case against torrent.is was dismissed but the Icelandic movie and music industry appealed to the Icelandic Supreme Court. In the original case, the courts ruled in favor of torrent.is and awarded it 400,000 ISK ($5025 USD). Last night the Supreme Court ruled in favor of torrent.is again, and awarded it an extra 500,000 ISK.
The case was dismissed once again because of legal formalities.
Torrent.is owner, Svavar Kjarrval, confided that he was “very happy with the decision,” and added that he wants to reopen the site next week. “However, the executive of one of the plaintiffs [SMÁÍS] claims he will use any means available to stop the site from reopening. I don’t know if that will succeed or not.”
A spokesman of SMAIS added “this verdict is sad, and it is incredible to deny copyright holders seeking their rights. This is an unnecessary adherence on legal formalities in this case, rather than taking on the subject as it should. There still has not been a formal verdict in this case and it seems to be hard to get a judge to review the facts of the case itself, that is, the copyright laws themselves.”
However, Svavar warns that it may not be the best idea to run out to host torrent sites in Ireland just yet. “This ruling doesn’t state that torrent sites are legal so there is still no certainty as to their legality.”