tagged w/ BREiN
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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), with the cooperation of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, has quietly shuttered 12 torrent websites in the U.S. and at least 39 sites abroad by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.
The names of the sites themselves remain unknown; so far, however, the major players seem to be unaffected.
The specific URLs are not being released because frequently the affected sites will spring up elsewhere online under a different TLD (e.g., TorrentMovies.com becomes TorrentMovies.info). Releasing the names of the sites would make it much easier for users to find their new URLs in the future.
This news, while interesting and concerning, is a far cry from the 70-plus sites shut down by the Department of Homeland Security last November, the culmination of a brewing crackdown effort.
Some torrent and file-sharing sites, including RapidShare, have even taken to hiring lobbyists of their own. A company spokesperson told Mashable recently, “Given the fact that the U.S. government is currently undertaking great efforts to fight copyright infringements on the Internet, our having a voice in Washington could be beneficial for us as well as for the U.S. government.”
According to TorrentFreak, BREIN “has (temporarily) disabled more than 1,000 torrent sites in The Netherlands, and they are now helping the MPAA towards doing the same in the U.S.”
In a BREIN release, the organization stated that it helped the MPAA take down around 29 sites last year; and earlier this month, it shut down 39 sites in the Netherlands for the MPAA, as well.
BREIN also conducts these anti-piracy “stings” in 11 other countries, including Germany, France, Britain and Canada. Its director, Tim Kuik, said in the statement (via Google Translate), “There will be new sites, but we take them down fast so they cannot grow.”
http://mashable.com/2011/01/27/mpaa-shuts-down-50-torrent-sites-in-global-sting/The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), with the cooperation of Dutch... more
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Now that the US government appears to be endorsing the idea of simply seizing domain names without notice(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101128/15302012021/who-needs-coica-when-homeland-security-gets-to-seize-domain-names.shtml) to the proprietors of those domains, it appears that others are doing the same as well. TorrentFreak reports that the Dutch anti-piracy group, BREIN, with help from the MPAA, has been able to get 29 different domain names -- all hosted in the US -- to point to BREIN's homepage instead(http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nzb-sites-101215/). The owners of those domains were apparently given no notice and no recourse. It sounds like most of the sites did not host any content but linked to potentially infringing content.
Whether or not you believe that simply linking to potentially infringing content should be against the law, we're seeing yet another example of the simple lack of due process and how this may impact other areas. If BREIN can get US domains shut down, what's to stop other countries from doing the same thing? China doesn't like reporting by an American site about China? What's to stop it from trying to "seize" that domain? Even if we grant the idea that many of these domains were engaged in or encouraging unauthorized copying of works covered by copyright, why should BREIN and the MPAA simply get to shut them down without any sort of trial?
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nzb-sites-101215/
Update: TorrentFreak requested a list of the affected domains from BREIN and received this response from Tim Kuik.
“No that would amount to free PR for the sites that intend to continue their unlawful activities at another hosting provider. These are not large sites and we want to keep it that way.”
In response to a question about how the sites were taken offline:
“The sites were taken down by the hosting provider,” said Kuik.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/11300412292/dutch-anti-piracy-group-with-mpaas-help-able-to-grab-29-us-hosted-domains-with-no-trial-notice.shtmlNow that the US government appears to be endorsing the idea of simply seizing domain... more
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Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except those that were uploaded through its content distribution service. Mininova’s founders took the drastic decision after they lost a civil dispute against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, and were ordered to remove all infringing torrents from the site.
http://torrentfreak.com/mininova-deletes-all-infringing-torrents-and-goes-legal-091126/Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except... more
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In August, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN won its case against The Pirate Bay, and the court ordered the defendants to block access to Dutch visitors. The case was appealed today and rightly so. It appears that the evidence presented by BREIN was faked in an attempt to mislead the court.In August, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN won its case against The Pirate Bay, and the... more
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Last Friday The Pirate Bay moved to Ukraine after its Swedish bandwidth supplier was forced to stop servicing the tracker. In the new setup, traffic to TPB is routed through The Netherlands, but anti-piracy outfit BREIN has now asked ISP NForce to stop handling TPB’s traffic. As a result the site is now down for most people.Last Friday The Pirate Bay moved to Ukraine after its Swedish bandwidth supplier was... more
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Mininova has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.Mininova has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge... more
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BREIN has apparently taken down no fewer than 75 Dutch based BitTorrent sites, as reported in their press release today. The 72 sites were part of an elaborate hierarchy and made money from preferential treatment related to donations. With BREIN on an enforcement roll in the Netherlands, it's surprising that any BitTorrent operator would continue operation in such a climate.
"The sites were managed by several different people but all made use of the same model that they got in franchise from the same person," the press release states. "The sites made money by giving preferential treatment to users that paid a ‘donation’. Such users were enabled to unlimited download of illegal content for a period. Never before were so many illegal peer-to-peer file sharing sites taken down simultaneously."
BREIN would not divulge who the lead BitTorrent site/individual was.
According to BREIN, the civil enforcement action was taken against Allmypower.org, Luckytorrents.org, Allmymovies.org, Digi-tor.org and Seederstor.org - amongst many others.
“Clearly this is an organisation aimed at illegally making money by systematically organizing the theft of other people’s creative work through a chain of relatively small sites”, says BREIN director Tim Kuik. “Knowingly linking to illegal content is illegal. These sites did so structurally. They are party to a crime.”
If BREIN's press release is accurate, the 75 sites were a tightly organized money-making machine. The sites were taken offline through a civil complaint to the fiscal police, however, BREIN states their investigation is ongoing. Additionally, further action may be taken as information provided by BREIN, especially about the operation's leader, is furnished to the police.
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I love torrents for both "legal and illegal stuff" but not torrent sites that just want your money....shit you might as well go buy that damn DVD your downloading, cause your going to need to donate $20 just to get it super fast!BREIN has apparently taken down no fewer than 75 Dutch based BitTorrent sites, as... more
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