The Iconoclast

UWire, an aggregator of student-generated content, on Wednesday launched its election blog Youth Vote '08.

In partnership with CBS News and Washingtonpost.com, UWIRE has selected 50 young journalists--including columnists, editorial cartoonists, photographers and news reporters--to cover the presidential election from the perspective of young voters.

"There are a tremendous number of first-time voters who will be crucial in this election, and Youth Vote '08 will provide direct insight into the issues they are facing along with their mindset," Ben French, vice president and general manager of UWIRE, said in a press release.

"Pollsters are saying the youth vote will decide this election," contributor Alvin Chang, a senior at New York University, wrote on Youth Vote '08 Wednesday.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday finally released the text of its 3-2 ruling saying Comcast violated the law when throttling BitTorrent transfers, marking the first time any broadband provider has been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

Comcast will be required to take these steps in the next 30 days: disclose "the precise contours" of its current and future network management practices, and submit a "nondiscriminatory network management" compliance plan so government regulators can decide whether they approve. The company will not be fined.

If Comcast fails to comply, it will be automatically required to "suspend the network management practices" associated with handling BitTorrent transfers.

Comcast is widely expected to appeal the FCC's 67-page order to a federal court, most likely the D.C. Circuit, which has taken a dim view of the commission's expansions of its authority in the absence of a law passed by Congress.

Comcast representatives told CNET News as recently as Tuesday that the company's lawyers needed to review the order before they were able to discuss an appeal; they did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The majority bloc of FCC commissioners--not one is an engineer--wrote in Wednesday's order (PDF):

In March, Comcast and BitTorrent declared a truce, with the broadband provider saying it will adopt a "capacity management technique that is protocol-agnostic" by the end of 2008. Before the announcement, Comcast had responded to network congestion caused by BitTorrent users by sending forged TCP reset packets, which disrupted transfers and prevented some users from uploading files.

Not helping Comcast's credibility was its poker-faced denial in August 2007 of initial allegations that it was filtering BitTorrent traffic. A few months later, though, it turned out that Comcast really was throttling BitTorrent, after all, and the company was forced to concede to the FCC that it blocks only "excessive" traffic. (The FCC picked up on this in its order, saying "Comcast's first reaction to allegations of discriminatory treatment was not honesty, but at best misdirection and obfuscation.")

As I wrote in an article a few weeks ago, the FCC may have trouble defending its actions in court.

In 2006, Congress rejected five different bills, backed by groups including Google, Amazon.com, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, that would have explicitly handed the FCC the power to police Net neutrality violations.

Even though the Democrats have enjoyed a majority on Capitol Hill since last year, their leadership has shown zero interest in resuscitating those proposals. While the FCC did adopt FCC broad principles (PDF) in August 2005 saying consumers may use the applications of their choice, the agency admitted on the day of their adoption that the guidelines "are not enforceable."

Robert McDowell, one of the two dissenting commissioners, said at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's conference this week that the FCC had relied on dubious evidence, including unsigned declarations.

"Governments need to make sure they have a very thorough record," he said. "The FCC of late has not been doing that."

Also at the conference, Verizon's chief technologist said delaying some peer-to-peer traffic may be necessary to prevent voice applications from being unusable (the company says it is not currently prioritizing traffic in this manner).

The ruling from the FCC stems from a request submitted in November by Free Press and its political allies, including some Yale, Harvard, and Stanford law school faculty. They claim that the FCC has the authority--under existing law--to "impose additional regulations" declaring Comcast's throttling to be illegal. They also enlisted the help of computer scientists from schools including MIT and Carnegie Mellon who argued that Comcast's throttling did not amount to reasonable network management.

(Ironically, some of the same interest groups that sued the FCC over its claim to possess unfettered authority--even in the absence of congressional authorization--to enforce broadcast flag rules are now backing its theories of unfettered authority to police Net neutrality violations. Public Knowledge, for instance, claimed the FCC's use of so-called ancillary authority was "arbitrary and capricious" and "unlawful." Now it loves the idea.)

WASHINGTON--The Federal Trade Commission essentially banned robocalls Tuesday--creating new rules that telemarketers may only send the prerecorded sales pitches to people who actually want to receive them.

The FTC amended its Telemarketing Sales Rule after reviewing more than 14,000 comments made since October 2006, when proposed amendments were published for public consideration.

There are two stages to the change: By December 2008, robocalls will be required to include an automated key-press or voice-activated opt-out. Beginning September 2009, telemarketers won't be able to send out any robocalls without "the prior express written agreement of the recipient to receive such calls."

There are no exceptions for telemarketers to send robocalls to customers with whom they have an "established business relationship," as an earlier policy allowed, but there are some exceptions. Health care-related calls subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 are still allowed, as are charitable fundraising robocalls made to members of the nonprofit charitable organization for which the call is placed, or to people who previously donated to it. The fundraising calls must still include an automated opt-out, however.

The strict limits won't stop robocalls from political campaigns, either."Political calls are not placed for the purpose of inducing purchases of goods or services, and therefore are not 'telemarketing' within the meaning of the TSR," the FTC notes in a footnote of the amendment.

Congress made some attempts this year to address annoying prerecorded political phone messages. The Robocall Privacy Act of 2008, introduced in both the House and Senate earlier this year, would put a number of limits on robocalls from political campaigns, including the number of calls made to a house in one day and the hours such calls can be made.

Internet companies including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are planning to use this year's political conventions to show off their technology and products--and, of course, host massive parties for employees, celebrities, and politicians.

Even though public interest in the Democratic and Republican conventions may be waning, there are more ways than ever to tune in to what's happening over the next several weeks. There are Webcasts, alerts sent via text messaging, and an announcement that Sirius XM Radio will carry "live, uninterrupted" audio from the conventions.

The common theme is finding out the best way to employ the conventions--where Barack Obama and John McCain are due to be come the two parties' official presidential candidates--as high-profile marketing opportunities. Google and Microsoft have signed up to be "official convention providers," and Verizon Wireless proudly announced this week that it's "ready" to handle 5 million more calls and data transmissions than usual in Denver next week. The deluge of press releases of dubious value has even included one firm boasting that it will provide area hotels with the "first wood hotel key card."

Google caters to bloggers, searchers
Google, as the official "Search and Online Video Community Provider" for the Democratic convention, which starts Monday in Denver, is a sponsor of the Big Tent, an 8,000-square-foot, two-story venue for journalists and bloggers.

The road to the White House in January leads through the party conventions in Denver and Minneapolis in the next two weeks.

(Credit: White House photo by Paul Morse)

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have everyone who works in politics in one place," said Ginny Hunt, a manager on the Google elections team. "It'll be a rare opportunity to have such hands-on work between Googlers and users." Google will be holding workshops and demonstrations of its applications in the tent, such as how to create an election map, and it will offer perks like free smoothies and massages for those who have access to the facility. There will also be kiosks throughout the convention facilities at which anyone can upload videos to YouTube.

Google will offer similar services at the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where it is the official "Innovation Provider." The Republican gathering starts Sept. 1.

The Internet company also recently rolled out its 2008 election Web site. It highlights new tools, like a video search engine and the Google Reader Power Players site, that capitalize on the interests of Google users, according to Hunt. "In terms of general interest around the election, we're only seeing it grow," Hunt said. "The online component will hopefully make (the convention) a bit more personal and a bit more 'on demand.'"

On the video search engine, users can enter terms a politician might have used in a speech and search for its exact location in a video of the speech on YouTube. Hunt said political speeches offered a perfect opportunity to demonstrate Google's skill with technologies like speech recognition.

This fall, Google plans to launch a voter information project it is collaborating on with the Pew Center's Electionline.org. It will let users look up their voting registration status, voting precinct location, and ballot information. User searches for this information spiked on Google during this year's primary season and before the fall election in 2004.

Yahoo looks for interest in videos
Yahoo also anticipates that providing online coverage of convention news will pay off. It is partnering with Politico and other news outlets to sponsor public discussion forums at both the Democratic and Republican conventions that will be made available on Yahoo News.

"Politics has been the top news category on Yahoo News for six straight months, so there's no question we're seeing a strong interest in it," said Yahoo spokesperson Brian Nelson. "Yahoo is in a much different position to provide deeper coverage of the convention than we were four years ago."

Nelson said Yahoo expects to see strong user interest in content provided through Yahoo's video partnerships with news outlets like ABC, CBS, and CNN. "These are partnerships we didn't have, and we weren't getting the video coverage like this four years ago," he said.

Microsoft's many applications
Microsoft will also provide online coverage of the Democratic convention, as its "Software and HD Web Content Provider." The company will provide live, high-definition video of all four days of the event at the convention's Web site. It will also provide data feeds, pictures, and other forms of content on the site. Enabled by its Silverlight technology, viewers can "customize" their viewing experience of the convention by viewing multiple streams simultaneously, viewing additional information such as a speaker's voting history, and using other features.

The company will highlight its Surface technology at both the Democratic and Republican conventions at "digital concierge" kiosks on site. The kiosks will provide local information like hotel locations and restaurant guides, as well as multimedia files from past conventions.

A number of Microsoft applications will be in use at the conventions behind the scenes. "We do consider our technical support and expertise we're providing to the conventions our first priority in helping them put on a first rate convention," said Microsoft spokesperson Ginny Terzano.

At the Democratic convention, Microsoft will provide systems for media registration, delegate tracking, credentials management, and podium operations. Both conventions will use applications like Microsoft Office Live Meeting for Web conferencing and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for online document management.

One Microsoft employee told us that the software company's name will be on the badge lanyards for at least one of the conventions.

The after parties
The three companies' participation in the conventions isn't limited to technical aspects, however. Google is co-sponsoring a party with Vanity Fair magazine the final night of the Democratic Convention.

"Microsoft is sponsoring some receptions and events as is typical of most corporations engaging at the convention," Terzano said. The company is working with other organizations to host a day of batting practice at Coors Field in Denver and the Minneapolis stadium to benefit local Denver and St. Paul/Minneapolis charities. For the Republican convention, Microsoft is co-sponsoring an essay contest for local St. Paul and Minneapolis teens. The winner will be invited to lead the Pledge of Allegiance during the convention and receive prizes like an Xbox.

While eBay isn't directly participating in either convention, its design director, Shawn Henderson, is decorating the Huffington Post "Wellness Lounge" at the Democratic convention.

The Wellness Lounge is a 1,300-square-foot space with a main conference room and five smaller rooms intended to provide a soothing environment for the media and other convention attendees. The lounge will feature Ayurvedic consultations, skin care sessions, Thai massages, and a special "Twitter room," among other things. Henderson will furnish the lounge with eco-friendly furniture like daybeds and chairs that will later be auctioned on eBay to support a charity of the Huffington Post's choosing.

Verizon CTO Richard Lynch tells conference attendees that engineers, not lobbyists or interest groups, should be making decisions on how to manage broadband networks. He says some Net neutrality advocates hear of a 22-millisecond delay and get a case of 'paranoia.'

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com)

ASPEN, Colo.--Verizon's chief technologist took a swipe at Net neutrality advocates on Tuesday, saying the concept has become overly politicized and important engineering details have been overlooked in Washington debates.

"We need to guard against turning technical and business decisions into political decisions," Verizon's Richard Lynch said at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's technology policy conference here.

Lynch gave the example of a customer placing a call using a voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, service that relies on time-sensitive packets. Unless a continuous stream of VoIP packets arrives, the call quality can suffer or even become incomprehensible.

How to accomplish that in a congested network? The answer may include delaying peer-to-peer transfers. "For me as a carrier, I need to satisfy the VoIP customer--whether it's mine or someone else's is irrelevant here--by delivering those packets in a timely fashion," Lynch said. "That may mean that for economic reasons, within the network, to keep the cost reasonable to keep the price reasonable, that I need to slow down (what's not) a time-sensitive file."

Some people hearing this "get all incensed and they accuse me of violating things I didn't even know that I could violate," he said. Customers who are "doing a P2P download or e-mail, they aren't going to see that 22-millisecond delay. And yet that's the kind of thing that seems to (cause) paranoia."

A Verizon representative told us after the talk that the company is not prioritizing VoIP over peer-to-peer traffic, and that Lynch was speaking generally about approaches to the problem of congestion that all broadband providers face. Verizon has stressed that it spends over $16 billion a year on adding greater capacity to its network and says it is working collaboratively with peer-to-peer companies through the P4P working group to "maximize networks for consumers."

Lynch's remarks come weeks after the Federal Communications Commission ruled against Comcast for adopting the same general sort of network management practices. By a narrow 3-2 vote, the FCC handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order telling it not to interfere with BitTorrent transfers, even though the company had already ceased the practice back in March.

What may strike an outside observer as bizarre is that the FCC votes for an order before it's actually written. The order is still being drafted, and the text of the document will eventually be released. (One source in a position to know said that the dissenting FCC commissioners still haven't been given the text.)

Taking the measure of Net neutrality
Joe Waz, Comcast's senior vice president for external affairs, said the arguments of Net neutrality proponents--presumably meaning groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge--were "absurd."

"The issue was an engineering issue," Waz said in a panel discussion following Lynch's speech. He added that critics claimed Comcast was trying to disadvantage P2P video to benefit its own video offerings--but they never explained "why we wouldn't interfere with streaming video" from sites like YouTube that could be handled better.

Robert McDowell, one of the two dissenting FCC commissioners, said there were "evidentiary jurisprudence" problems with the agency's ruling. In part, McDowell said, "there were a couple of unsigned declarations" that the FCC relied on.

"Governments need to make sure they have a very thorough record," he said. "The FCC of late has not been doing that."

Kathleen Abernathy, a former FCC commissioner and now a partner at the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, agreed that the term Net neutrality made little sense. (Abernathy is also a director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a free-market group that has been a critic of the concept.)

"It was such a great phrase that it's morphed into more than what it really is," Abernathy said. "You have to peel it back and ask, 'What do you really mean?'"

Both Comcast and Verizon said that engineers, not lawyers and lobbyists, should be making network management decisions. "I do get very, very concerned that the people who are taking things like deep packet inspection and making it a horrible thing need to look at it from an engineer's viewpoint," Lynch said.

On a related note, Lynch said that Verizon was trying to work cooperatively with large content holders--the very ones that said Monday they wanted broadband providers to filter their networks--and wanted them to "feel comfortable that their content will be dealt with in the way they truly believe it should be."

But he stopped short of saying Verizon would actively monitor its customers' online activities to detect copyright violations. "I can't tell you that I will police for you," he said. "I don't think it would be appropriate for me to do that...(We want) to stay on the right side of the privacy position that we've taken as a company."

AT&T, by contrast, said in January that it was testing technology to spot piratical activity. On Monday, we asked the company about its current plans. (We asked: "Can you confirm that AT&T is not monitoring and has no plans to monitor its customers' traffic or other online activities to detect possible copyright infringements?")

Spokesman Michael Balmoris replied in a way that didn't exactly answer the question: "We have said that we are working with some in the content industry with the goal of encouraging the legal downloads of movies, TV shows, and other entertainment and content--we want our customers to access any legal content they want. In addition, let's set the record straight: we have not said that we are going to filter our customers traffic to detect possible copyright violations."

Updated at 11 p.m. PT with subsequent comments from a Verizon representative.

The press coverage of this year's campaign season can appear endless, but the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama are giving readers suggestions for which stories to follow on Google's Power Readers in Politics site, launched Monday.

The two campaigns, along with a handful of political journalists, have created lists on Google Reader of the sources they subscribe to. Users can subscribe to their lists, see what stories the politicos are sharing, and read their comments.

The journalists included on the Power Readers site include Mike Allen of the Politico, Chuck DeFeo of Townhall.com, John Dickerson from Slate, Mark Halperin from Time Magazine, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, Jon Meacham from Newsweek, and Patrick Ruffini of The Next Right.

While the journalists have provided some candid insights into the articles that interest them ("The only way to vote for the principled, heroic, maverick McCain is if you had a time machine," writes Arianna Huffington), comments from the campaigns have so far been limited. However, the reading lists for both the McCain and Obama campaigns clearly reflect their interests and political affiliations. McCain's list, for instance, features Fox News, The Weekly Standard, and the U.S. Navy site. Obama's list includes Think Progress, The Daily Show, and Daily Kos.

The variety of news and opinion available on the Web may be endless--but, as the candidates' lists reveal, it's increasingly easier for readers to only take in the news they want to.

Google Power Readers in Politics (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Shira Perlmutter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an RIAA affiliate, talks up the benefits for broadband providers of policing users' online activities. The MPAA's Michael O'Leary is third from left.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/News.com)

ASPEN, Colo.--Recording industry and motion picture lobbyists are renewing their push to convince broadband providers to monitor customers and detect copyright infringements, claiming the concept is working abroad and should be adopted in the United States.

A representative of the recording industry said on Monday that her companies would prefer to enter into voluntary "partnerships" with Internet service providers, but pointedly noted that some governments are mandating such surveillance "if you don't work something out."

"Despite our best efforts, we can't do this alone," said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. "We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes...The good news is that we're beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia." (IFPI is the Recording Industry Association of America's international affiliate.)

During a discussion at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's technology policy conference here, Perlmutter said one filtering solution would involve identifying particular files that are (or are not) permitted to be sent to particular destinations. That would be a "very tailored approach," she said.

The idea isn't exactly new: the Motion Picture Association of America said nearly a year ago that ISPs should police piracy, and one of its member companies asked federal regulators to make this a requirement. AT&T said in January that it's testing technology that would let it become a copyright network cop, and the MPAA subsequently suggested that piracy-prone users should have their accounts terminated because they're "hogging the bandwidth."

In a statement sent to CNET News on Monday, an AT&T spokesman said: "There is nothing inherently wrong with P2P applications, which are legal technologies that are used and welcomed on our network. We have consistently said that AT&T will not become an enforcement agent on the Internet, nor will we inhibit the ability of our customers to access any legal content they want."

Not one of multiple AT&T representatives we contacted responded to our followup question, which was: "Can you confirm that AT&T is not monitoring and has no plans to monitor its customers' traffic or other online activities to detect possible copyright infringements?"

(What's a little odd is that the conference organizers said they couldn't find any broadband provider representatives to participate in the panel discussion--even though Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T's vice president for regulatory planning and policy, was listed as attending the event, and executives from Comcast and Verizon were sitting, silently, in the audience.)

Also at the conference on Monday, IFPI's Perlmutter rattled off a list of countries that have taken at least some steps toward antipiracy filtering, through laws enacted by the legislature or other means: France, South Korea, New Zealand, Belgium, and Australia. In addition, Canada's copyright lobby has pushed for legally-mandated filtering.

In the U.S., she said, referring to broadband providers, "increasingly they will be partnering with us--they will be doing deals with us."

Michael O'Leary, a senior vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, said the relationship between content companies and broadband providers had become less adversarial than before and both sides had left the "us against them era" behind. (This was probably a reference to the political trench warfare that led Verizon to reject the RIAA's request to identify a subscriber and the fuss over one proposal in Congress to implant anticopying technology into consumer devices.)

O'Leary welcomed what he described as today's "multifaceted approach that involves working effectively with the ISPs and universities."

MovieLabs did conduct tests last year of about a dozen "digital fingerprinting" technologies from companies such as Gracenote, Vobile, and Audible Magic. Certain products worked well in some environments, like on user-generated Web sites and on university networks, MovieLabs' chief executive told us in January. But that's not the same as saying it'll work well for tens of millions of AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon subscribers.

Even if the content industry can sign deals with broadband providers, there are still a slew of unanswered questions--including ones about customers' privacy and how filtering will work in practice. Will piratical transfers be automatically interrupted? Or just slowed? Will piracy-prone users merely find--this is what the IFPI suggests--their accounts suspended? How to detect whether content is licensed, or protected by fair use rights, which vary based on the situation? What if the transfer is encrypted?

Looking ahead a few years from now, the content industry may not be satisfied with voluntary agreements. Let's say that AT&T and some of its larger rivals start to filter pirated material and demonstrate (at least to a first approximation) that it's possible, but one ISP does not. Look for the RIAA and MPAA and their political allies to ask Congress for a law that would transform theretofore "voluntary" agreements into mandatory ones.

CNET News reporter Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report

John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has released his technology platform. Among the highlights: antipiracy measures, tax credits, and a formal federal policy of avoiding "unnecessary regulation."

These aren't much different from the responses the Arizona senator gave us during the primary season, but they do expand on what a McCain administration might do in practice.

John McCain

McCain shares some views--like making the R&D tax credit permanent--with his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. (This is no surprise. For a politician, supporting the R&D tax credit is the tech-policy equivalent of kissing babies.)

The differences are more interesting:

• Obama says he "strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet." McCain "does not believe in prescriptive regulation like 'Net-neutrality." (Technically the two statements aren't at odds because one politico is talking about broad principles, but it's pretty clear where they're going. Our Voters' Guide has more details.)

• McCain says he "supports efforts to crack down on piracy, both on the Internet and off." Obama doesn't. Instead, the Democrat says "we need to update and reform our copyright" system.

• Free trade is something that McCain seems to support, though sometimes he calls it "fair and open world trade." Obama says, by contrast, he wants "a trade policy that ensures our goods and services are treated fairly in foreign markets."

• McCain would "expand the number of H-1B visas." Obama would not. The closest he comes to lifting the visa cap, a longtime goal of Silicon Valley companies, is to say he favors "comprehensive immigration reform," whatever that means.

Dell's attempt to trademark the term "cloud computing" faced another setback last week after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent the company a "non-final" refusal of its application.

The PTO informed Dell on August 12 that its registration of the trademark for the term "cloud computing" was refused because "the applied-for mark merely describes a feature and characteristic of applicant's services...In addition to being merely descriptive, the applied-for mark appears to be generic in connection with the identified services and, therefore, incapable of functioning as a source-identifier for applicant's services."

Although the term has been deemed too generic, Dell has six months to submit evidence or arguments in response to the PTO's decision before it is made final.

The PTO initially indicated Dell would receive the trademark on July 8 but revoked its decision on August 7.

With its tagline, "upload. share. archive.", it may have been inevitable that the magazine-sharing Web site Mygazines.com would face allegations of copyright infringement.

Mygazines, which announced its launch in late July, allows users to upload and share magazines. Digital copies of the magazines on the site are easy to read, and users can comment on them, leave ratings, and use articles to create their own "custom" magazines.

The site is free to join, and there are no advertisements, but that hasn't allayed concerns of magazine publishers.

Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Warner's Time division, told the AP that the publisher is looking into ways to have the site shut down.

Usually, a company encouraging its users to share copyrighted material could be held accountable for infringement. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the file-sharing site Grokster could be held liable for the copyright violations of its users, since the site took "affirmative steps to foster infringement."

There is a hitch in the case against Mygazines, however. Mygazines is registered in the Caribbean island of Anguilla and hosted in Sweden, by the notorious PRQ. The Stockholm-based PRQ is owned by the founders of BitTorrent tracker site Pirate Bay and is known for hosting other dubious sites.

With its domain name registered abroad and its servers beyond U.S. borders as well, Mygazines seems to have slipped around the jurisdiction of U.S. copyright law. Even though publishers could pursue legal action against the site for material available in the U.S., there'd be no way to get representatives for the company to court or to collect damages.

So if Time and other publishers are looking to thwart Mygazines and its more than 16,000 users, it may have to go after VeriSign, which maintains the master .com database.

Or, it could look across the Atlantic. It's not an impossible task: in February 2008, a Swedish prosecutor charged four men connected to Pirate Bay with conspiracy to violate copyright law; a week later, a Danish ISP was ordered to block Pirate Bay.