It might seem that the #Uncarrier has a soft spot for pirates, but perhaps it’s only when they’re being asked to deal with them without a court order.
T-Mobile’s Austrian branch is refusing to comply with a request from a music rights group to block access to the popular torrenting site The Pirate Bay in the country, Torrent Freak reports.
The Pirate Bay has faced particularly strong opposition in Austria in the past month. The mobile network operator A1 Telekom Austria was ordered to block access to the site for its subscribers by the Commercial Court of Vienna earlier this month.
In response to that decision, IFPI Austria, an association of Austria’s music industry released a statement from Franz Medwenitsch, its managing director:
For the further development of the online music market that is a very gratifying decision. We offer the providers to work together towards a legally compliant and easy implementation of site-blocking.
LSG is another large music rights group in Austria that represents over 13,500 artists. Following the court decision regarding A1, LSG sent out several of its own notices to Austrian ISPs urging them to follow suit and block access to the site.
A spokesman for T-Mobile told the Austrian tech site Future Zone (translated by TF) that the company did not plan to comply.
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“We will not comply with this request, and access to The Pirate Bay will not be blocked,” thes spokesperson said, adding that it was the authorities, not music rights groups, that “should implement clear legal regulations with regard to Internet blocking in Austria.”
As stated earlier, T-Mobile was not the only ISP to receive the letter from LSG, yet it has been the only one to respond that they will not be blocking The Pirate Bay.
We’ve reached out to Deutsche Telekom, one of T-Mobile’s European arms, and will update if we hear back.
