And so the Pirates win the day

It began with the ban of the Russian website allofmp3 by the internet provider Perspektiv. The Piratebay decided to ban users of the provider from accessing their website as a response of the ban against allofmp3. Guess what, Perspektiv announced today that they lifted the ban of the Russian website and the Piratebay in turn decided to lift their ban as well.

According to the Pro Piracy Lobby website the provider experienced some heavy fire from disgruntled customers and privacy & free speech groups. It seems that the pressure on the provider was this intense that they decided to retract their decision and apologize to their customers.

Together with our new chairman of the board, the management agrees that limiting Internet access is not within the framework of our business, says Fredrik Winbladh, President of Perspektiv Bredband.

It is of great importance the we as a telecom and Internet operator, a so called common carrier, focus on delivering information. We can't risk our position being questioned given the previous statement. The management and the company learned a lot from the debate that took place and we will use this experience to keep developing according to our vision of becoming the prime broadband choice of the Öresund region (Southern Sweden), says new Chairman Mikael Paulsson.

Two interesting statements. It seems that this episode clearly shows that companies will listen to their customers if only enough of them raise their voice.

While it is not entirely clear if the PirateBay initiated ban was the last straw to convince the provider to lift the ban, it may be that it had something to do with it, at least indirectly, as it got quite the news coverage on the web. It may have indirectly caused the lift of the ban after the thing went viral on the Internet.

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