After a court ruled yesterday that The Pirate Bay must be blocked in Sweden, reaction has been polarized. While copyright holders celebrated, the boss of ISP Bahnhof criticized the move, deriding the court action as signaling the death throes of the copyright industry. Interestingly, the company also teased a potential workaround.

While in practical terms the impact may not be as pronounced as it would’ve been half a decade ago, yesterday a Court of Appeal in Sweden made a landmark decision.

After years of litigation by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry, local Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) was ordered to block The Pirate Bay and streaming portal Swefilmer.

The case went to trial at the Stockholm District Court during October 2015, ending in victory for the ISP at the District Court, but the Court of Appeal’s decision unraveled all of that, ordering Bredbandsbolaget to implement “technical measures” to prevent its customers accessing the ‘pirate’ sites through a number of domain names and URLs.

Considering the importance of having The Pirate Bay blocked on home turf, the official response from the industry was somewhat muted. Per Strömbäck, spokesman for the copyright holders, said that it’s good that the legal situation is becoming more clear. Representatives from the ISPs were much more animated.

Bredbandsbolaget itself said it was surprised at the decision, noting that not only does Swedish law does not support it, but it will also fail to achieve its aims.

“The Patent and Market Court of Appeal has not taken into account the intention of the legislator with Swedish law,” the company said.

“Our belief is that this type of blockage is not effective to prevent unlawful distribution of copyrighted work on the internet. Nor is it a good guarantee that creator will get paid for their works.

“Services must evolve and become more customer orientated. The film and television services that grow the most today are those who, instead of seeing the internet as a threat, see opportunities in digitalisation.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reaction of Jon Karlung, boss of ISP Bahnhof, was much more scathing. Karlung has positioned himself and his company as defenders of Internet freedom and this decision has him all kinds of fired up.

“The entire industry is in shock. It is disastrous in so many ways, the judgment is a deathblow to a free and open Internet,” Karlung said.

“We are the postman and the postman does not read people’s mail, or take control over the content. [This ruling signals] the death throes of the copyright industry,” he added.

While the current action involves just a single ISP, it is crystal clear that the copyright holders didn’t come all this way to have just a couple of sites blocked by one provider. They will be back, probably sooner rather than later, to obtain more injunctions against more providers against a broad range of sites.

At this stage, it seems that any site with a large proportion of infringing content could become a target and Karlung is concerned just how far things could go.

“One can almost think of what the consequences are going to be. There’s copyrighted content on YouTube. And should we block Google, how will that work?”

According to Bredbandsbolaget’s interpretation of the Court ruling, it must block specific URLs to stop customers getting access to The Pirate Bay. However, there are fines attached if the ISP fails to do so and as everyone knows, blocking the site can be extremely difficult. As a result, the ISP says it needs time to work things out.

“Exactly what is it to be blocked? This is very technically complicated. It is extremely difficult to block access to sites. What this actually means to us, we need to analyze in detail,” the ISP said.

But for Bahnhof’s Jon Karlung, the approach seems more adversarial. At some point, it is almost certain his company will be subjected to a similar injunction that will force it to block The Pirate Bay, something the ISP chief vehemently opposes. However, speaking with HD.se, the Swede hinted at another possibility.

Co-opting the Court of Appeal’s instructions for Bredbandsbolaget to use “technical measures” to block The Pirate Bay, Karlung told the publication he may yet introduce “technical countermeasures” for the convenience of his customers.

Quite what that means is unclear, but offering VPN-like services is something that the company is already familiar with. Way back in 2014, Bahnhof provided its customers with a no-logging VPN service to protect their privacy.

That being said, if it chose to offer something along similar lines to unblock The Pirate Bay, the situation could get very interesting indeed.

In the UK, where a similar injunction forbids the country’s leading ISPs from providing customer access to The Pirate Bay, dozens of smaller ISPs still legally allow their customers to access the site. However, back in 2014 when a proxy provider decided to do the same, he was arrested by police. He’s still awaiting trial.

Either way, one gets the impression that the war for the so-called “free and open Internet” is far from over in Sweden – and there are still some people left that are prepared to fight for it.