The court ruled that a large number of protected works, such as films and music, are made available via The Pirate Bay. Viewing and listening to these works infringes on the rights of the copyright holders of those works. Following the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of The Pirate Bay are therefore also infringing copyright themselves.
The court applies the rules from an important judgment of the CJEU (CJEU March 27, 2014, case C-314/12, ECLI:EU:C:2014:192 (UPC Telekabel Wien). This means that it must be assessed whether the injunctions sought by Stichting Brein are compatible with the fair balance between the three fundamental rights relevant in this case, namely (intellectual) property, freedom of information, and freedom of enterprise. According to the court, this is the case. The court finds that, if the injunction sought is granted, there will be no unnecessary denial of public access to lawful information. The court also finds that the public will be seriously discouraged from visiting The Pirate Bay. There are no less intrusive measures available to achieve that objective, and the injunction is also proportionate.
In this case, the District Court of The Hague had issued a ruling in 2012. In that ruling, the court ordered the providers Ziggo and XS4all to block IP addresses and domain names of The Pirate Bay. An appeal was lodged against that ruling with the Court of Appeal in The Hague, and subsequently the Supreme Court and the CJEU also issued rulings. The Supreme Court then referred the case to the Amsterdam Court of Appeal for resolution. After the referral by the Supreme Court, Stichting Brein increased its claim on a number of points. According to the Court of Appeal, this is no longer possible on some points. Therefore, not everything that Stichting Brein has now requested has been decided, for example with regard to mirror and proxy sites.
