The private site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents linking to the finest recordings from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than many public trackers.

The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on intel provided by two music industry lobby organizations, the IFPI and the BPI. The police arrested Alan Ellis, the founder of the site, and months later several uploaders were arrested as well.

Four of the uploaders pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court in December 2008, where they were all charged with copyright infringement offenses. The four were later sentenced to community service and fines.

The trial of OiNK founder Alan Ellis was pushed back and started today at Middlesbrough Crown Court. Due to a press boycott of the previous court hearings, there was no information available on the reasons for the delay.

What we do know is that Ellis has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the music industry for his role in the OiNK tracker.

During the first day of his trial little has happened. The case has been adjourned until tomorrow when the jury will be assigned. There is still a reporting ban in place on three specific issues, but the trial can and will be reported on.

We will cover the rest of the trial, which is expected to end next week, in the coming days.

Update: Court documents list the remaining uploader as part of the trial, but new information received by TorrentFreak says that his case is due later this year.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The new year starts without The Pirate Bay tracker, which was closed in November, and also without Mininova, which saw its site being censored and stripped down by a Dutch court. To counter these losses, several public tracker-only services have made a comeback along with multiple torrent-only storage sites.

Where do we go from here? Let’s make some predictions.

Prediction 1: The Pirate Bay will cease to offer torrent links

After closing its tracker in 2009, The Pirate Bay will further evolve by removing all torrents from its index in the new year. The site will be reduced to a BitTorrent platform that no longer stores torrent files. Users will still be able to submit torrents through a third party service such as Torrage, but instead of linking to these torrent files, The Pirate Bay will list only Magnet links.

During the second half of 2010, The Pirate Bay four will appear before the Appeal Court. They will be found ‘not guilty’ and walk away free. Shortly after this victory in court, Pirate Bay’s YouTube killer The Video Bay will be released to the public.

Prediction 2: A BitTorrent client will be dragged to court

In 2009, the entertainment industry and authorities took legal action against various BitTorrent users and numerous sites. They left BitTorrent clients alone, but this will change in the new year. A coalition of copyright holders will file a lawsuit against one of the major BitTorrent clients, in an attempt to stop the ever increasing piracy rate.

The copyright holders will argue that BitTorrent clients play a vital role in downloading and uploading copyrighted files, and that the software is assisting in copyright infringement. They will demand that the torrent client implements a filtering mechanism to prevent users from downloading movies, music or games without the permission of the copyright holder.

Prediction 3: More people will use BitTorrent anonymously

2010 is the year where copyright holders gain more control over the Internet. Three-strikes legislation will be rolled out in various countries and global trade agreements such as ACTA will result in humongous fines for casual downloaders.

As a result of this newly founded Internet police state, millions of BitTorrent users will take measures to hide their identities online. By the end of the year, a quarter of all BitTorrent users will use a VPN service or similar anonymity software, with another quarter looking to do so in the following 12 months. This will make new legislation ineffective, and lead to further lobbying by the entertainment industry for even harsher anti-piracy measures.

This cycle will repeat itself until the entertainment industry decides to innovate.

Prediction 4: BitTorrent (live) streaming will take off

Advances in technology and growing broadband penetration have brought us to a point where BitTorrent-powered streaming solutions have become reality. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is working on a streaming implementation and experiments have shown that it is possible to stream high definition content.

In the second half of 2010, the first BitTorrent-powered YouTube competitors will be launched. These new BitTorrent sites will mainly offer streams of pirated movies and TV-shows. Live BitTorrent streaming will gain worldwide traction during the 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa. In the second half of the year, commercial implementations will follow, allowing broadcasters to stream live content at zero cost.

Prediction 5: uTorrent will become a resource hog

In 2010, uTorrent will be transformed from a lightweight BitTorrent application into a media portal similar to its nemesis, Vuze. Unlike Vuze, BitTorrent Inc. will continue to offer a lightweight uTorrent version for the the people who don’t want to make this switch, preventing a revolt among conservative uTorrent users.

The new uTorrent will be a resource hog, featuring a full blown search engine, video conversion, iTunes integration and a video player. The browser interface will allow uTorrent to be put on set-top boxes, which opens up the possibility for BitTorrent Inc. to reopen a new and improved version of their video store that can be easily hooked up to TVs.

Due to the changes, uTorrent will obviously have to remove its tagline ‘a (very) tiny BitTorrent client.’

—–

Happy new year to all of you from TorrentFreak. Let us know what your predictions are for 2010 in the comments below. We will feature the best on our side-blog FreakBits during the coming days.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Dozens of notable BitTorrent sites have emerged since things really began to take off in 2002/2003, and literally thousands of lesser known private communities have flourished. But in terms of sheer volume of torrents, users and mainstream awareness, a trio of sites have stood head and shoulders above the rest.

By scale and exposure, The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt became the three most prominent BitTorrent sites in the latter half of the decade, serving billions of torrents to multiple millions of BitTorrent users.

Due to this massive and unprecedented level of interest, it became increasingly clear – the movie and music industries, just as they did with dozens of sites and services before them, would move to crush or suffocate them into submission. 2009 became a painful year for all three of them.

The Pirate Bay

On April 17th 2009, after being hounded continuously by the combined might of the movie and music industries, the four defendants in The Pirate Bay trial were eventually found guilty.

While the court said that it was the users of The Pirate Bay that committed the first infringements by sharing copyright files, it went on to dismiss most of the technical details, and judged the case on intent. It was declared that the intention of the defendants was to facilitate the sharing of copyrighted works.

Categorizing the infringements as ’severe’, the court said the team of four were well aware that copyrighted material was being shared using The Pirate Bay and that they made it easy for the users and assisted the infringements. The lack of a ‘notice and takedown’ certainly did not help the defense.

The four defendants were sentenced to one year in prison and a fines of $905,000 each. The case will be appealed.

The crushing verdict did not close the site, however, despite further legal attacks on its bandwidth infrastructure and bans forbidding the founders from operating the site.

Indeed, with adaptation, the site remains alive and fully operational today, proving that in The Pirate Bay’s case, suffering pain is not a terminal condition.

Mininova

After operating for almost five full years, the BitTorrent giant Mininova also succumbed to relentless entertainment industry in 2009, deleting over a million torrent files and shutting down the majority of its website.

Mininova was left with little choice, being forced into these drastic measures following a negative verdict in their court battle with the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN in the summer.

The Dutch court told Mininova that it must remove all infringing torrent files from its index on pain of huge fines, but as this proved technically unfeasible, the site’s owners took the decision to remove all torrents uploaded by regular users, many of which were not infringing any copyrights at all. This proved disastrous to the site. As a force to be reckoned with, Mininova has been taken back to the stone age.

isoHunt

In 2006, several Hollywood studios filed a complaint about then US-based site, isoHunt. In common with claims against The Pirate Bay and Mininova, the studios stated that the site’s owner was guilty of profiting from, and inducing, copyright infringement.

Just 8 days ago, on December 21st 2009, a US federal court in California ruled that isoHunt was indeed guilty of inducing copyright infringement, stating that the site’s operators had engaged in “purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, aimed at promoting infringing uses of the websites.”

Since the circumstances of the case were so similar to earlier ones involving Napster and Grokster, the judge decided there was no need to have a full trial and instead granted a summary judgment against isoHunt.

No damages awards against the site have yet been announced and isoHunt remains fully operational at the moment, pending an appeal. In common with The Pirate Bay, isoHunt has not yet succumbed to the pain of its court defeat, despite overwhelming odds.

Lessons to be learned and the future of torrent sites

While Mininova is almost certainly out for good, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt remain active, despite their losses. Nevertheless, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from the court defeats of all three sites. Although some may believe that the negative verdicts point to the illegality of torrent sites, that is not the full picture.

In all three court defeats – notably in three distinct jurisdictions (Sweden, The Netherlands and United States) – indexed content aside, none of them stated that torrent sites are illegal. However, fingers were pointed firmly at the operators and their conduct when running their sites.

Being prepared to filter out fakes and malware from sites but not having a ‘notice and takedown’ system for copyright holders can prove fatal. But in the cases of Mininova and isoHunt, who both operated such systems and even co-operated with copyright owners, participating in discussions about copyright infringement on their forums can undo all the hard work.

In future, if site owners are to reduce liability, they will have to remain a lot more detached from their operations than they have been previously. The lessons to be learned are many, a few of which are detailed here.

Already TorrentFreak is informed that next-generation torrent sites are in development, meaning that 2010 will prove yet another interesting year.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

One of the options for the government is to criminalize unauthorized downloading by making it punishable by law. The entertainment industry, represented by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN among others, have lobbied extensively for such a change. Consumers, on the other hand, prefer to keep things the way they are right now.

Backing interests of the general public, Dutch consumer rights organization Consumentenbond has started a campaign where they defend the public’s right to download copyrighted material without repercussions.

“Sometimes I buy, sometimes I download, but I am not a criminal..,” is the message the consumer organization is trying to put across in the newly launched campaign.

The rationale behind the campaign is that the the entertainment industry has failed to provide sufficient legal alternatives to online piracy, leaving consumers no other choice than to consume online media through file-sharing sites.

“At the moment, paid downloads don’t offer any added value compared to unauthorized downloads,” Bart Combée, Director of the Consumer Rights Organization said . “Before criminalizing consumers, the industry has to make sure that they offer a decent amount of content. Once that improves, I think consumers are willing to pay,” he added.

Previously, the consumer rights organization also stood up for users of The Pirate Bay, after the Amsterdam court ruled that the site should block Dutch users without reviewing the evidence carefully.

The present campaign reiterates what many others have said before. There has to be a fair balance between the interests of multi-billion dollar companies and the individual rights of consumers. And since a report commissioned by the Dutch government recently concluded that file-sharing actually has a positive effect on the economy, it might be best to keep things the way they are for now.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Talking about copyrighted content on Usenet is illegal they argue, and BREIN wants FTD to be shut down for allowing this. The newsgroup community, however, is not prepared to tolerate BREIN’s accusations and has decided to take action. Earlier this year FTD took BREIN to court, demanding that it should retract its numerous statements that FTD operates illegally.

In a letter to the court in this ongoing case, FTD’s lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet stated yesterday that BREIN is going too far with its statements. Downloading copyrighted files and music for personal use is perfectly legal in The Netherlands, so he sees no reason why merely talking about it should be illegal.

FTD users do not ‘make files available’ and are therefore not acting against the law. “Hyperlinks, torrents, NZB-files or other technical possibilities to download copyrighted works are not provided. BREIN says in effect that it should be forbidden to talk about downloading material,” Engelfriet added.

Undeterred, BREIN maintained their stance and declared FTD a criminal operation. In a counter-claim against FTD, the anti-piracy outfit has demanded $70,000 a day in penalties if the Usenet chatter continues.

Needless to say, if BREIN wins their case this will have serious implications for many other websites and communities, including TorrentFreak. Simply mentioning that a movie such as 2012 can be downloaded through BitTorrent would no longer be allowed according to Engelfriet.

FTD’s lawyer is confident about the positive outcome of the case, arguing that FTD is operating within the boundaries of Dutch copyright law.

“We fully expect to win our case. BREIN is big on statements but often short on facts and legal arguments to back them up,” Engelfriet told TorrentFreak earlier, adding that they “have the law and the facts” on their side.

The verdict in this case is expected to be announced sometime next year. Until then, here’s our Usenet tutorial.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Yet as we sit here on the brink of December 2009, the site remains open. No other site in BitTorrent history has ever weathered so many storms, so many obstacles and so many setbacks, but still prevailed.

When threatened in an aggressive manner, most torrent sites show a little bravado but ultimately comply with the shutdown requests. Not so The Pirate Bay.

The huge raid back in 2006 resulted in the loss of masses of equipment, and this alone would’ve been sufficient to break the will of a lesser site. But within days the site was back online, and since then has hopped around various hosts and countries, evading every attempt to mortally wound it.

Earlier this year the 2006 raid bore its fruit, with the founders of the site being found guilty, given huge fines and ordered to spend time in jail. But even this development didn’t deter the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker. With appeals pending, hope remains.

Not even the promised financial penalties could cripple the site or its operators. Could the authorities find any assets belonging to the founders? Not a chance. Even the site had been handed over to new owners, Seychelles-based Reservella.

Threatening the site’s host would also prove useless, as the company is owned by Fredrik Neij. But eventually the authorities took direct action, by threatening the site’s indirect bandwidth supplier with fines if they continued to supply it with a connection to the Internet.

So down the site went yet again. True to form, back it came again within hours with a new ISP. Within 20 minutes that company was threatened by Hollywood. Losing that host, TPB set sail for the east and soon came back online. Again.

However, the site’s enemies were already hatching another plan.

After TPB relocated some of its operations to Ukraine, in October Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN found another chink in the armor. Traffic to the site was routed through The Netherlands via Nforce, a LeaseWeb customer. Nforce quickly complied with BREIN’s threats, and The Pirate Bay went down yet again – very temporarily of course.

Then at the end of October the Stockholm District Court delivered what should’ve been a killer blow, banning Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij from operating the site on pain of $71,000 in fines for non-compliance. But even this decision is proving toothless.

The Pirate Bay is no longer located in Sweden (and no longer runs a tracker), which causes a problem for the Swedish courts. As for the human flesh and bones included in the decision, they are proving just as elusive.

While both individuals are appealing the decision, both deny running the site anymore, having handed it over to others. Furthermore, Fredrik – aka TiAMO – lives in Thailand and has done for some time. Gottfrid – aka Anakata – can be found sleeping all day and operating his computers all night in the jungles of Cambodia. The locations of the pair clearly present a slight jurisdiction problem for the Swedish decision.

“I am wondering if Swedish law has the power to issue a prohibition or penalty against a website in another country and my adopted acts in another country with a website that does not exist in Sweden,” said Fredrik this week, commenting on the situation.

So, while the site is effectively banned in Sweden, it is not located in Sweden. However, because it no longer operates a tracker of its own it is much less responsible for the infringements of others than it was before. This potentially paves the way for the ban on the site to be lifted.

Furthermore, while the founders are banned from running the site in Sweden, they say they no longer run it. But in any event, neither of them live in Sweden.

In the meantime, the site remains up. Quite what the next move will be by the anti-piracy groups is open to speculation, but historically, one thing seems almost certain – The Pirate Bay will respond and refuse to be cowed.

One day it will disappear, of that there can be little doubt, but it will be at a time and a place of their choosing, not one dictated by their adversaries.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

During the next few days, maybe hours, Demonoid may go down due to some serious-sounding technical issues. They have already caused some damage to the site so the operators want to limit further damage.

“We are experiencing power outages that have caused some ram and hard drive issues. We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage,” they say in a statement.

The downtime could be extended, “…days maybe, until we can change the power circuit,” they add.

Several Demonoid users already report connection issues, but the site is still accessible to most people at the time of writing. The blackout won’t mean much to millions of Russian and Ukrainian BitTorrent users though, since they are already blocked from the site.

Over the years Demonoid has had its fair share of downtime. In June 2007 Demonoid was pressured to leave their host in the Netherlands, mainly because of legal threats from the Dutch anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The site then relocated to Canada, but after threats from the CRIA, it decided to shut down there as well.

In 2008 the site eventually reappeared in full glory after being offline for six months. This time the downtime shouldn’t last that long. Any Demonoid users stuck for ideas on alternatives if the site goes down, can check here. If you’re looking for high speed downloads you could also consider to try Usenet instead (our Usenet guide).

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

GGF’s proposed notice and takedown is in fact not very different from those operated already by sites such as Mininova. What they add is the option for copyright holders to keep their content on the site and get paid for it. Plus, the users have to pay a monthly fee to use the site.

As one of our commenters put it yesterday: “Cool, a paid private tracker without dedicated servers or seed-ratio enforcement, and with arbitrary censorship.”

And the users of the site are not the only ones who are complaining. In response to GGF’s plans, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, that acts on behalf of the music, movie and gaming industries, issued a press release today in which they argue that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to please the copyright holders.

“In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient,” BREIN director Tim Kuik says. “This sort of Notice and Take Down system works in case of incidental infringement but not for the structural infringement that happens at The Pirate Bay.”

“The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal,” Kuik continued.

“So they can not assume that there is permission and leave it up to the right holders to check continuously for infringements. It is their site, their business and so their job to clean it up and keep it clean”, Kuik added, demanding a stricter removal system.

BREIN’s response makes sense from their perspective, since they have a pending court case in which they demand a proactive content removal system from the Dutch-based torrent site Mininova, who already have quite an elaborate content removal system in place.

GGF’s CEO was contacted for a comment on BREIN’s response, and we will add that to the article once it comes in. It is clear though that not all copyright holders are wildly enthusiastic about the plans for the new Pirate Bay.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

They have the fallout from the planned sale to Global Gaming Factory to contend with, a new lawsuit initiated by US movie studios, and yesterday they lost a Dutch court case in their absence. From that action they now face the prospect of huge fines in The Netherlands if they don’t disable that country’s access to their site within 10 days.

Today brings news of yet another upcoming lawsuit against Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm, even though they say they disposed of The Pirate Bay a little over 3 years ago.

Italy’s FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) say they will be suing the three and seeking damages in excess of 1 million euros.

In August 2008, The Pirate Bay was made inaccessible in Italy after ISPs were ordered to block its domain. However, The Pirate Bay appealed and eventually won the court case. In October the Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement. The case is now awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court of Appeal.

This new Italian legal action is based on evidence collected during The Pirate Bay proceedings in Bergamo last year – evidence which, incidentally, was supplied by FIMI to the prosecutor in the first instance.

Referring to the planned sale of TPB to GGF and their basis of claim, President of FIMI, Enzo Mazza, said: “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”

Peter Sunde’s Italian lawyers, Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Paolo Micozzi, told TorrentFreak that under Italian law, an entity seeking compensation for damages, when there is an ongoing criminal indictment, could either file a civil action outside of the proceedings (i.e, a normal civil action for damages), or bring his claim for damages within the criminal procedure as a damaged party.

“In any case, nothing has been notified to us (as lawyers of Peter Sunde) so far,” Gallus told TorrentFreak. “I gather they have announced their intentions before starting the procedure.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

GGF said it would acquire the site’s domain names, sites and code (from the current owner, Seychelles-based Reservella) for SEK 60,000,000 ($7.8 million). Of this amount, SEK 30,000,000 would be paid in cash and the rest covered by newly issued shares. Additionally, file-sharing technology company Peerialism would also be acquired by GGF for a total of SEK 100 million, of which at least SEK 50 million is set to be in cash.

For the deal to go through the funding for the purchases has to be in place very soon and GGF shareholders need to approve the move at their Annual General Meeting. Now according to a report, there have been some changes in ownership structure at Global Gaming Factory.

On July 13th, GGF CEO and major shareholder Hans Pandeya received one million company shares which have been reportedly allocated “to a group of investors”. The information appeared on equity marketplace Aktietorget where GGF is listed.

GGF stock has certainly had its ups and downs during the past few weeks. Boosted 200% on the back of the initial news, by July 12th they had settled back to levels experienced before the announcement but since then have fallen further, recovering only marginally during the last couple of days.

But just when things were looking optimistic for GGF and their purchase, events today in a Dutch court painted a rather less optimistic outlook.

Notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN is today sueing not only The Pirate Bay for copyright infringement, but in a shot from nowhere – have also named Global Gaming Factory in the lawsuit.

BREIN already summoned The Pirate Bay to court via Twitter at the end of June, but as soon as they heard the news that GGF would buy TPB, they added them to the lawsuit. Obviously Peter, TiAMO and Anakata don’t read Twitter, since they didn’t turn up to the hearing.

Casting doubt over the possible purchase, in court GGF lawyer Ricardo Dijkstra said that Global Gaming Factory that it is uncertain whether the sale will go through. The company would only buy The Pirate Bay if it can turn the site into a “legitimate business” and that, he said, depends on whether the assets they buy “can be used in a legal manner.”

Dijkstra said GGF was surprised it had been named in the case since it has shown a pro-copyright stance and has no say in how Old Pirate Bay is run, which will make a hell of a lot of sense to everyone except BREIN and their lawyers.

Confused? You won’t be! After next week’s episode of The Pirate Bay soap…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

BREIN says that FTD operates illegally but the Usenet community and its specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm vigorously deny this and are now taking legal action the Dutch anti-piracy outfit. The background to the case can be found in our earlier article, and a more detailed report on the action against BREIN here.

Yesterday, while BREIN’s site was still supposedly out of action following an alleged (or Hoaxed) DDoS attack from Pirate Bay fans, it published a further report about FTD, which was hidden on its site away from easy public viewing. Strangely the same page at the time of writing is password protected and the report unavailable, but we have a copy and translation.

Entitled ‘BREIN Demands Closure of FTD’, the anti-piracy outfit went on to say that if FTD does not close it will require a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day against the service, in addition to compensation and full reimbursement of costs. BREIN said that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal.

BREIN then refers to earlier discussions it had with FTD, noting that it asked FTD to cease its “structural use of illegal content” in early 2009. The two sides had entered discussions to see if they could iron out their difficulties. Following on, FTD pro-actively modified how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.

“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought – but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”

The news saw BREIN declare that FTD was a criminal operation in an article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” and this led to FTD taking legal action against BREIN to try to clear their name by having their operation declared legal by a court. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD.

Tim Kuik from BREIN now says that it is clear that FTD “continued their abuses unabated” and that the modifications they made were only made to hide the “true nature” of the site.

“It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kuik. “FTD earn money with a system that exists by virtue of the huge supply of illegal content to Usenet.” Mirroring the disappointment felt at FTD, Kuik added: “It is disappointing but illustrates that BREIN’s outstretched hand has been cut off.”

So what exactly does this claim for 50,000 euros per day mean for FTD? Lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak that BREIN did not ask the court for damages. Legally they are barred from asking for damages – article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code says that an organization that represents the interests of a certain group can never ask for damages. They asked instead for a penal sum of 50k euros if FTD were ordered by the court to shut down but it refused.

“The idea is that a court can order you to shut down but you can ignore the court,” said Arnoud. “With the penal sum, you risk that the court will then sell your house or seize other assets. In principle that’s legal, but the amount is of course ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous also sums up my view of the BREIN counterclaim. Instead of addressing any of the points we raised, they simply repeat their standard rhetoric. Nowhere is the distinction made between uploading works and telling people that someone has uploaded a work for (legal) download. And downloading illegal uploads is legal in the Netherlands,” notes Arnoud.

“BREIN is not known for its careful handling of the truth,” he added. “They are a propaganda organization after all.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In their advice to the government, a working group consisting of four members of the Dutch parliament looked into the matter. They suggested criminalizing downloading once the entertainment industry has come up with sufficient legal alternatives.

The conclusions of the report were widely debated in the Dutch press. Worryingly, also some of the factual errors about Mininova that the parliamentarians dreamed up were recited in the media, which may hurt the BitTorrent site in the ongoing court case against the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

For instance, the report claims that Mininova ignores complaints form copyright holders and refuses to remove torrents from their site. This nonsense of course, since the site has had a copyright policy for years and is known to follow up every complaint.

Another inaccuracy in the report is the claim that Mininova adds “reviews” to the torrents their users have uploaded, something we’ve never heard before. The rumors that they actually host copyrighted content and that they filter porn from their site pro-actively don’t hold up either.

The Mininova staff are not happy with these allegations, especially since they are currently involved in a lawsuit against the entertainment industries that covers the same issues. “We are very displeased with the fact that the working group didn’t contact us prior to releasing this report, or even took a look at mininova.org,” Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer said.

“We demand that the spreading of false information related to Mininova will be stopped. In addition, we demand that the working group removes the name Mininova from the report and places a rectification on the website of the Dutch parliament and in several national newspapers,” Dubbelboer added.

“We take this very seriously,” Erik Dubbelboer said. “If these demands are not met, we’ll consider to take legal steps,” he said to emphasize the seriousness of their demands.

Arda Gerkens, the head of the parliamentary working group pointed to her parliamentary immunity when she was confronted with the news. However, legal experts said that parliamentarians don’t have any immunity when they speak out in public, which she did.

Mininova demands that the rectifications are made before the verdict in their case against BREIN is due, so it wont influence the decision of the judges.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Hinting at The Pirate Bay, BREIN also suggested that Mininova should ban torrents using trackers that are known to track a variety copyright infringing content. However, in an attempt to solve this issue more directly, the anti-piracy outfit is suing the operators of the site, demanding that they block access to Dutch visitors.

Claiming that the founders of the site are untraceable by the Swedish authorities, head of BREIN Tim Kuik hopes to get a hold of them via the Internet. “You can find the defendants on Facebook and Twitter. Internet works for enforcers as well as infringers. Now they know about the court case in The Netherlands,” Kuik said.

BREIN’s methods are a little unusual to say the least. Instead of ordering ISPs to block the site like IFPI did in Denmark and more recently in Norway, they sue the founders of the tracker instead. Not to mention the idea of serving The Pirate Bay team using Twitter and Facebook.

There are no public mentions of the summoning in any of the public profiles of the Pirate Bay Founders so we assume that they did so via direct messages. Meanwhile, BREIN’s official site seems to be suffering from a DDoS attack, but this is of course totally unrelated to the announcement of the anti-piracy outfit.

Developing story…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The results were presented earlier this week and they were quite remarkable. A massive 93% of the surveyed respondents said they download music, movies or games from the Internet, while only 5% of this group of downloaders actually uses a paid service like iTunes.

Downloading copyrighted music or movies for personal use is not prohibited in The Netherlands, but uploading is. In most cases this means that using BitTorrent to download copyrighted music is not the best choice, since it generally requires uploading. However, this is not holding any of the Dutch youngsters back, so it seems.

BitTorrent was by far the preferred file-sharing (download) application according to the survey. More than 45% of the downloaders said they use sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay to download the latest music and movies. Usenet came in second with a respectable 15%.

Aside from looking into their download behavior, respondents were also asked to predict the outcome of the Mininova trial. Only 15% thought that BREIN will come out the winner, while 45% thought Mininova would strike up a victory. The remaining 39% knew too little about the case to make a useful assessment.

There are of course many flaws in this type of survey. First off, respondents were recruited through online forums and even highly tech oriented communities such as Tweakers. Among these tech savvy and active Internet users the percentage of P2P-users is undoubtedly higher than average. Secondly, the survey was promoted as a “download” survey, this will of course attract the attention of those who actually download more than those who don’t.

Polls and surveys can be very misleading, especially when they are ill constructed. What we can conclude from the Dutch survey, although carefully, is that The Netherlands has quite a few active BitTorrent users and that they are confident that Mininova will beat BREIN in court. Let’s hope that a similar survey among lawyers would reach a similar conclusion.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Not wanting to be bullied for what it considers to be a completely legal operation, FTD took the unusual step of taking BREIN to court, after Tim Kuik, the head of the outfit, said that FTD and its operators were committing a crime. FTD’s owners and lawyers vigorously deny this claim, the details of which can be found in our earlier report.

So what led up to this legal showdown? TorrentFreak spoke with FTD’s specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet, of Ictrecht law firm.

“In January of this year, BREIN announced they were ‘going after Usenet’ and
specifically singled out FTD as their first target,” Arnoud told TorrentFreak.

Naturally this position was of concern to FTD, but instead of burying their heads in the sand they actually contacted BREIN with a view to discovering where their differences lay and sorting them out amicably.

“Shortly after that, FTD engaged in negotiations with BREIN to find out what their objections were and how we could overcome them,” Arnoud told us. The discussions led FTD to pro-actively modify how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.

“We even voluntarily made some changes to the FTD platform to ensure there could be no doubt we were in the clear,” Arnoud explained. But their attempts to engage and negotiate with BREIN came to nothing.

“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought – but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”

Indeed, ignoring the outstretched hand and making their intentions against FTD public, BREIN chief Tim Kuik spoke with Dutch publication Volkskrant and the resulting article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” labeled FTD’s operations criminal. “Although they [FTD] are not carrying illegal content on their servers, what FTD does is simply criminal,” said Kuik.

Usually at this point a site being bullied by BREIN would either dig in its heels and wait for the lawsuit and injunction against them, or capitulate in fear of being destroyed.

“We could have waited for preliminary injunction proceedings, which is BREIN’s weapon of choice,” Arnoud told us. But that would have taken too much time, and since preliminary injunctions leave little room for a thorough investigation of all relevant facts, the risk was that FTD could be forced to close down for all the wrong reasons.

So FTD did something quite unusual in these cases – it went on the offensive against BREIN instead.

“At that stage, we felt that doing nothing would leave the sword of Damocles over our heads,” Arnoud told TorrentFreak. “BREIN is very fond of making continuous ominous statements in the press, and that could create a FUD environment for FTD. Therefore we decided to go to court and ask for an official declaration that downloading is legal, that it’s also legal to inform people about materials to download and to offer a platform to let people inform each other,” he added.

FTD also wants a public statement from BREIN correcting its assertion that its operations are criminal, and a declaration from the court that FTD’s operations are fully legal.

“We fully expect to win our case. BREIN is big on statements but often short on facts and legal arguments to back them up,” Arnoud told TorrentFreak.

“We have the law and the facts on our side.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

On TorrentFreak we’ve also had issues with BREIN after they labeled us a ‘pirate weblog’ and then used material from our site without proper attribution. Our legal counsel had to jump in, in an attempt to stop their libelous writing and harassment of smaller website operators.

As expected, this didn’t have much effect, and BREIN continued their operations claiming a few dozen victories by shutting down smaller torrent communities. They usually operate by sending emails to the site’s admins or hosting providers claiming that their activities are illegal, ordering them to shut down or face legal action.

Besides torrent sites, BREIN is also targeting Usenet indexers, claiming that they assist in copyright infringement. The NZB files found on many of these sites can be considered as Usenet’s answer to .torrent files as they point to content hosted elsewhere. They also make the otherwise-complicated Usenet downloading process relatively easy to master. BREIN does not like the fact that NZBs bring Usenet to the mainstream and considers sites hosting those files to have the same function as torrent sites and is targeting them in much the same way.

One of the NZB sites threatened by BREIN is BNI-online. The site received an ultimatum, with BREIN ordering them to stop their ‘illegal’ activities within 48 hours or be taken to court. The site has responded to this request and ceased its operations.

Splendid, the site’s founder explains that BREIN’s threats are one of the reasons for closing down the site. At this point we can not confirm that any other sites have closed after similar threats, but it wouldn’t be a surprise. Every torrent or NZB site hosted in The Netherlands will be approached by the anti-piracy outfit sooner or later.

This week, BREIN will be in court with another Dutch based site, Mininova, and TorrentFreak will of course keep you updated on the outcome and progress in this trial.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The individuals were charged with copyright infringement and sentenced to fines and community service, rather than custodial sentences the prosecution had been pushing for.

Steven Diprose was sentenced to 180 hours community service, and ordered to pay £378 in Court costs. Michael Myers was told to pay a £500 fine. Mark Tugwell has to undertake 100 hours community service and pay £378 Court costs. The fourth uploader, James Garner was sentenced to 50 hours community service and also has to pay £378 Court costs.

What remains are the cases against one other uploader and Alan Ellis, the administrator of OiNK. Unlike other file-sharing related cases, the charges against Ellis are not related to copyright offenses. Instead, he has been charged with “conspiracy to defraud”.

Ellis’ case was scheduled to be heard today at the Teesside Crown Court, but the session didn’t last long as the trial was postponed till January 2010. Due to the press blackout, TorrentFreak was unable to find out whether a reason has been given for the delay.

The OiNK shutdown was an international operation. Codenamed “Operation Ark Royal”, it involved co-ordinated action by both British and Dutch police forces. IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations, allegedly assisted in gathering the ‘evidence’ that led to the arrests.

The tracker – which served some 180,000 users including NiN frontman Trent Reznor – was shut down but several replacements took over including Waffles.fm and What.cd. The latter developed a community of nearly 100,000 members and recently celebrated the upload of the 500,000th torrent.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Founded in 2001, FTD is the largest Usenet community in The Netherlands with a massive 450,000 members. The site and its software allows FTD’s users to report the location of material they find on Usenet, which could include the usual movies, music and TV shows. Of course, once other members know where to find the material, the downloading can begin. Since much of the material downloaded is copyrighted, BREIN went on to claim the site is illegal, but the picture in The Netherlands is not necessarily how BREIN paints it.

Downloading movies, TV shows and music from the Internet for your own personal use is completely legal in Holland. Making copies of original material you own for your own use is also completely legal. Even making copies of pirated material you don’t own is legal, provided it is exclusively for your own use. Although certain torrent sites can exist in a murky semi-gray area, FTD doesn’t even link to copyright works hosted by someone else – there is no so-called “structural infringement” which BREIN claims some BitTorrent sites demonstrate.

Considering the above, FTD are pretty annoyed that Tim Kuik of BREIN called them criminals, since his claims have no basis in law. Unlike many sites threatened by copyright groups, FTD aren’t sitting back and taking this, they are fighting back.

“FTD is a perfectly legal activity,” said FTD director Ronald Sievers, a point on which his legal team agrees.

“BREIN’s claims are built on legal quicksand,” says FTD lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet. “They speak of ‘facilitation’ and the structural use of the availability of unauthorized downloads, as if it were a foregone conclusion that this is prohibited. Nothing could be further from the truth. Furthermore, FTD only facilitates communication between people who quite legally download from Usenet. FTD does not facilitate or carry out any upload and therefore can not be held liable.”

So, supported by two Dutch copyright lawyers and IT experts, FTD have filed a lawsuit against BREIN in which they request the court clarifies these points;

1. That downloading is legal in the Netherlands, even if the uploader committed copyright infringement when he uploaded the material.
2. That directing users to content on Usenet via FTD is legal, even if the material was put there without permission of the copyright holders.
3. That FTD is acting within the law, considering the above.
4. That there is no need for FTD to filter any of the reports its users create which refer to the location of content on the Internet
5. That FTD does not have to remove any of these reports, unless BREIN makes a correct and formal complaint.

Of course, FTD also want a retraction of BREIN’s statement that FTD is illegal. “FTD require a public statement correcting this and wants a declaration from the court that they were simply acting legally,” it said in a statement.

Additionally, Kuik also quipped that “what FTD do clearly constitutes a crime,” to which Arnoud Engelfriet, one of FTD’s lawyers responded, “A correction of this should be published on BREIN’s homepage too.”

A copy of the subpoena can be found here. (pdf)

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The service is mostly used by independent artists, but record labels are also interested. Today, the Dutch record label Beep! Beep! announced a partnership with Mininova, which will see the site distribute the label’s complete discography for free under a Creative Commons license.

BitTorrent has proven to be an ideal marketing tool for musicians, writers and other creative minds who want to promote their work and engage fans. Up until now, though, there was no easy solution to monetize their releases. A new feature from Mininova changes that, as it allows content publishers to offer their newly born fans the option to buy related products.

In just a few clicks, users of Mininova’s content distribution platform can now add links to CDs, concert tickets, merchandising or other products they want to sell alongside their torrent release. The new feature integrates a link to products in the artist’s myshopify.com store, as the record label Beep! Beep! has done with one of their latest releases.

The label even gives Mininova users a 20% discount for helping out with seeding. According to the label, the reason why they have decided to give all their albums away for free is simple. “Because it’s only fair not to pay for something you haven’t heard yet,” they say.

“In our opinion torrents are an excellent way to present you with our music. That’s why Beep! Beep! and Mininova have teamed up. We like the fact that you’re taking the effort to get to know new music. In fact, we’d like to thank you for downloading and seeding our music by giving you a discount on our hardcopies,” the label announced.

Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that the shop links will go live for users of the content distribution system some time later today. It’s good to see that Mininova not only helps to distribute content, but also help artists to pitch their gear to interested fans.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Site administrator Alan Ellis was arrested immediately and eventually charged with conspiracy to defraud. Five others, who were arrested months later, were accused of uploading music to others via the site.

Four of the uploaders plead guilty at Teesside Crown Court last December, where they were all charged with copyright infringement offenses. The four have now been sentenced.

Steven Diprose was sentenced to 180 hours community service, and has to pay £378 in Court costs. Michael Myers was ordered to pay a £500 fine. Mark Tugwell has to undertake 100 hours community service and has to pay £378 Court costs. The fourth uploader, James Garner was sentenced to 50 hours community service and also has to pay £378 Court costs.

For one other uploader and OiNK admin Allan Ellis the wait continues. Their cases have been adjourned and they will appear before court in March.

A source close to one of the convicted uploaders told TorrentFreak in a response: “[The Judge] swallowed the prosecution line completely that initial seeders were causing major damage to the copyright holders, and particularly uploaders who uploaded before the official release date. The fact that all the early uploads were only 1 or 2 days early and that 3 out 4 of the uploaders bought their CDs online did not sway him. All the retailers, quite naturally, denied this.”

We were further told that, if the defendants had not had such good references and strong legal representation, the Judge would have seriously considered a custodial sentence. This ruling, the first of its kind in the UK, will most certainly be used as a precedent for future cases.

Developing story, more info will be added later.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.