The Parliament from Norway agreed to several amendments that might turn into law soon

May 1, 2013 11:23 GMT  ·  By

In an effort to block sites such as The Pirate Bay, Norway has taken another step towards a legislation that should enable authorities to battle online copyright infringement as new amendments are well received in the Parliament.

Politicians have proposed several amendments to the Copyright Act, which makes it easier for them to monitor file-sharers and have sites that break the law blocked at the ISP level, TorrentFreak reports.

The new legislature received broad support in parliament and it will most certainly pass into law.

While such issues aren’t exactly new in Norway, the recent troubles with The Pirate Bay have pushed politicians to act.

For instance, back in 2009, several movie studios from Norway began putting pressure on the country’s largest Internet Service Provider to block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay.

However, Telenor refused, insisting that such a move wasn’t backed by any law. A court later gave the same verdict and the appeal was rejected.

The amendments that have now gained the approval of the Norwegian Parliament have roots in 2011, when the Ministry of Culture announced that it had put forward proposal for amendments to the Copyright Act.

These were presented in January 2013 and put to vote this week. The ruling parties were in favor of the bill, while only the opposition voted against it.

As mentioned above, these amendments make it easier for authorities to chase down enables and end-users of materials that are under copyright.

The Pirate Bay, the website that is one of the main causes why these new laws are coming to light, has been born in Sweden in 2003. Six years later, the website’s founders were charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted material and put on trial.

They were found guilty and sentenced to a year in a prison and a hefty fine.

Now, in an effort to keep the site running, they keep moving from one domain to another in various countries.