Norway’s New Internet Anti-Piracy Legislation Takes Effect

After many and many debates, Norway sees its new anti-piracy law coming into force. For file-sharing fans this means that the measures against their downloading habits are getting much tougher and for admins it means that at least some of their websites are likely to get blocked by the ISPs.

Since former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden ignited debates by leaking top secret data concerning the monitoring and surveillance practices of the US and British governments – privacy and internet freedom have become the central focus of media worldwide.

The harmful effects of illegal file-sharing have become the perfect justification for monitoring and what forms it will further take in the future some can guess, other can mathematically point to as part of a larger plan.

Returning now to the Norway’s anti-piracy law – the country’s internet users will be from now on subjected to monitoring by copyright holders in the name of intellectual property protection.

The new legislation allows copyright holders to request the government’s permission to scan file-sharing websites for illegal downloading activities.

Furthermore, under the new law, harvested IP addresses can be linked to real-life identities through court ruling and the assistance of ISPs.

The ISPs will have, of course, a major role in the enforcement of the new law - legal requests will have them block file-sharing websites. Already many voices point to Telenor as the first ISP to receive such a request against the resilient Pirate Bay.