The Athens Court ruled that barring access to torrent sites is unconstitutional following a Greek anti-piracy group’s bid to have sites such as KickassTorrents, The Pirate Bay isoHunt, 1337x and other local sites blocked. Copyright groups have already won court cases in countries like the UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy and France, but not Greece.

The anti-Piracy Group argues that the sites damage their members’ business but the Internet Service Providers (ISP) state that censorship is not the solution. The Athens Court sided with ISPs by finding that blockades are in violation of constitutional rights, breaching people’s right to freedom of information. It was found that the torrent sites contained links to files distributed legally that shouldn’t be blocked. Furthermore, the verdict doubts that blockades would be effective due to the number of circumvention options for site owners and users.

It was found that ISP’s “freedom to conduct a business” is at stake. Part of the verdict found that “the requested injunction goes contrary to Article 16 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, violating the rights of defendants providers in entrepreneurship, and the basic principle of Internet neutrality, which provides that all information must be handled without discrimination.”

The Greek verdict is aligned to that of a Dutch Appeals court in The Hague in 2014 that ruled that the local blockade of The Pirate Bay had to be lifted.