Photo: Thomas Martinsen

Revised Code of Conduct agreement between the Danish Telecom Industry Association and the Danish Rights Alliance

Sep 27, 2022 | Collaborations

27. September 2022

Since 2013, the Danish Rights Alliance, the Ministry of Culture and the Danish Telecom Industry Association have entered into a collaboration called Share With Care (SWC). The cooperation aims to simply and effectively block illegal websites and guide consumers towards legal services in their search for content. Furthermore, SWC also deals with user information.

A central point in the SWC cooperation and in the fight against illegal websites is the Code of Conduct (CoC), which obliges members of the Danish Telecom Industry Association to quickly and effectively block services that have been judged illegal by a court. When an illegal service is blocked, users will be greeted by a ‘blocking sign’ when they try to access it. 

However, the illegal market on the Internet is constantly and rapidly developing, which is why it has been necessary to carry out a slight revision of the CoC agreement. This implies greater flexibility and automation of the processes in the agreement, which should make it easier for both the Danish Rights Alliance and members of the Danish Telecom Industry Association to block illegal websites.

Block list for automatic takedown

An innovation in the new CoC agreement is that it will be possible for Internet service providers to automatically retrieve an updated list of pages subject to blocking orders and to have the illegal services blocked within seven working days.

This automatic option to retrieve the list helps to streamline the CoC agreement, as it is no longer necessary for the list to be distributed via the Danish Telecom Industry Association to its members. This will make it easier and faster to effectively block illegal websites, which is crucial in the fight against these.

Flexibility in contacting illegal services

An increased flexibility, in the question of whether the Danish Rights Alliance must contact the illegal services in the event of blocking, also helps to make the process more efficient. As before, the Danish Rights Alliance must try to contact the illegal services, but only if contact information is explicitly stated, which in practice excludes the large number of so-called automatic redirects to mirror sites.

Read the revised CoC agreement here.