Police authorities issued an injunction on the website torrent.is and forced its owner to close it yesterday. Thousands of Icelanders have used the website to share music and films online.
Police, the representative of the sheriff in Hafnarfjördur and the lawyer representing SMÁÍS, the Association of Film Right-Holders in Iceland, went to the home of the owner of torrent.is yesterday morning and brought him in for questioning.
According to ruv.is, the owner of torrent.is was not notified of this visit beforehand so that he wouldn’t have time to dispose of any evidence.
After questioning, the sheriff decided to issue an injunction on torrent.is, but did not find it necessary to confiscate the owner’s computers, as SMÁÍS had requested, since he promised to close his website, as he did yesterday afternoon.
Managing director of SMÁÍS Snaebjörn Steingrímsson said this is a great relief for everyone working in the music, film and computer game industry in Iceland, adding video rentals have suffered considerable financial loss because of torrent.is.
SMÁÍS’ lawyer, Hróbjartur Jónatansson, said the injunction will be affective while SMÁÍS and other associations suing the owner of torrent.is have been given a green light for an investigation with the purpose of determining whether the website is in breach of copyright laws.
Click here to read more about torrent.is.
