The Netherlands has been at the forefront of battling online piracy through the enforcement of banning orders on internet service providers, and now the country's also leading the way in admitting that the strategy is not as effective as had been hoped. As Tweakers reports, a court in The Hague has ruled that blocks on The Pirate Bay have proven ineffectual in curbing P2P traffic and permitted local ISPs XS4ALL and Ziggo to lift their ban on the file-sharing website. A spokesperson for XS4ALL has told Tweakers that the block has now been removed, though it will take some time for the DNS changes to propagate fully.

Today's judgement marks a successful appeal from the Dutch ISPs against a lower court ruling in 2012 instructing them to block access to The Pirate Bay. Initiated by the local anti-piracy group BREIN, the original lawsuit was seen as a victory for intellectual property advocates and was accompanied by similar demands being put on UK ISPs. With today's reversal, BREIN will have to pay 326,000 euros in damages to the affected broadband providers. Other Dutch ISPs like UPC and KPN that weren't subject to this ruling are maintaining their blocks for now, but it seems like a foregone conclusion at this point that they'll be following suit.