Anti-Piracy Group Takes Out Usenet Indexer
Written by Ernesto on May 17, 2009Anti-piracy group BREIN is well known in the BitTorrent community, having already managed to shut down hundreds of small sites. The Dutch outfit is currently being sued by a group of Usenet enthusiasts after it called their site illegal. Undeterred, it’s now flexing its muscles to get NZB sites closed down too.
Funded by the movie, music and gaming industries, BREIN has been a thorn in the side of BitTorrent sites for years. More recently the outfit extended their activities to target sites frequented by Usenet users. They labeled the Usenet community FTD as criminals, and are currently being sued for doing so.
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.
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49 Responses
First
They have awakened the beast. Now they shall pay the price. BREIN is going down.
ha
this is probably what (some of) these types of users get for always preaching about the greatness of their file-sharing mechanism, dont be a loudmouth and keep things under you’re hat unless you feel like going out on a limb.
I love it how the big company likes to pick on the small organizations. Why don’t they sue Microsoft? Msn Messenger “assists in copyright infringement”, anyone can just send me a song or movie.
I don’t see them getting sued. Oh wait, I forgot they are downright selfish and like to pick on the smaller groups. Not to mention they label us as “Criminals”.
hehe I’m definitely composing a song. Its called “brein is going down”. And o, it won’t be your electronic kind of thing. Producing that is really easy. I’m talking about 3 percussionist,a bass player, 2 keyboards, a brass section with 6 players and 4 back up singers plus the main singer. Its kind of silly how they target intermediaries to intimidate them and consequently they shut the sites down ’cause of their risk for running out of business. Its stupid. Cowards. Sue microsoft indeed, sue mac for amking their fabulous Iproducts, sue the company that made my cd burner, sue the company that made the dvd recordders, sue sony, which made my sony pcm d50 digital recorder.
Ernesto is a snitch for BREIN. He’s the one who dropped the dime on demonoid.
@ 7
troll detected…
YE! and sue me for thinking that mans only one true vestige was a free internet. Sue me for thinking that capatalist greed would be kept at bay, or better still, deflected from its course. But fear not, for less a cause than this has been justified. And time, tho not on our side, will be the healer of this wound.
#9 Shut up retard. Put down your copy of V for Vendetta and go back to bed. You have school in the morning.
It’s not really a shock BREIN is finally ‘getting around’ so to speak to Usenet. More and more people are flocking to it and thus bringing more attention to it.
Have to wait and see what happens here i guess.
*sighs*
agree w/ #4
hi guys
In fact, you’ll see the treasures in this link!!
Very exciting site!!
http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/204/
@14 Did you post that link for a laugh?
Well no surprise there after all if you wanna win you first take out the weak(or if you prefer) the support, harass the supply lines and so on LoL
But fear not, sharing will live on in one form or another and don’t be shy in screaming to the world about your channels one day one will appear that is invunerable to those types of attacks.
They also want FTD to cease there “services” till they meet in court. So thats why they are now going to the judge to make that happen. This will be interesting to see because if BREIN wins the case then it mean alot for all the “information” sites in the netherlands.
17!!!11one
why don’t they go after usenet providers directly (or the little number of isp that provide almost decent usenet) ? After all they make money out of “piracy” unlike the indexing sites.
and why is “assisting in copyright infringement” such a big crime that millions are uselessly spent on harassing (coward) people
Hey guys, there’s surely some little country that don’t care about those shits and that’s ready to host thousands of “pirate” sites, haven’t anybody read good old “island in the net” by Bruce Sterling ?
Why can’t everyone just stfu about filesharing, stop bragging about it and everything. The filesharing community nees to keep everything LOW PROFILE. That way, we don’t attract all this mess.
They are already ruining the uploading of the episode of Breaking Bad (se02ep11) apperently.
@19:
Respectfully I disagree, people should shout about what they are doing and not be affraid that is why I do believe that project like
OSIRIS have some good news for all people LoL
http://osiris.kodeware.net/
or Herbivore form the Cornell University.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/egs/herbivore/
My local library assists in copyright infringement, they have CDs, DVDs and books all available for free. In the library there are computers with drives to rip from and software to write to, and a shop from which I can buy blank disks. And photocopiers for the covers and the books. I think they should take the library to court. Or they could just stop being asses.
What about serveless indexers?
osirisDOTkodewareDOTnet
I like to see them trying to figure it out how to stop that LoL
Netherlands is one of the worst places to host p2p sites right now. Why anyone hosts a p2p site there is beyond me.
Just out of interest. Does anyone have a screencap of the site before it was shut down?
Was it an automated index or were NZBs user submitted?
–
With IPRED and 3 strikes more people are bound to flock to usenet with the high level of anonymity offered. MPAA/Brein will follow the file sharers and more NZB sites will get shut down.
It is interesting that FTD is fighting a lawsuit against BREIN. Going on past p2p cases in Netherlands I’d say it will be hard for them to win. Especially without making any concessions. They’ve already removed direct links to usenet search sites in order to better their case.
Squash one ‘cockroach’…you know what happens. God forbid BREIN looks behind any walls >.<
Usenet? I thought Usenet died months and months ago? Wow.
help me how do i download warez for free?
Im sure Brein will win their upcoming case against Mininova.
The previous case against TPB set a precedent for the clueless masses on how bt technology works. Even if the judge was unscrupulous that wont change the massive blow heard round the world. So all you little ignorant kiddies that seem to bombard this site with your idiocy, come back to reality.
shouting “FTW!”, and “zOmg MAFIAA” and other idiotic statements that do nothing to further the knowledge and understanding isnt helping…hell I’d be surprised if you even got passed that first sentence without you brain melting. You fucking kids are a bunch of freeloaders who prolly dont even seed after a download, and you’ve made the bt scene look childish that Mininova will lose. Which is sad to say…but cest la vie.
FTD = Finally Taken Down
TF needs to adress its Bot issues..
@14 by John
In fact, you’ll see the treasures in this link!!
Very exciting site!!
http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/204/
This blew my ass gasket…
John my friend you are an Imbicile
Brein is going to kick some nerd ass once again!!!!! Love it!
osiris.kodeware.net
I would like pretty much to see Brein kick a serverless anonymous webpage from existance or better yet try to stop darknets like Retroshare LoL
retroshare.sourceforge.net
Or better yet stop a client that uses and “overlay network” that in fact creates a new internet where the rules don’t apply anymore LoL
Just go dark people
retroshare.sourceforge.net
Until a client that uses and “overlay network” that in fact creates a new internet where the rules don’t apply anymore comes along LoL
This is great news.
soon the software companies will realize without piracy and sharing there is no market.
people who dont know about thier products dont care.
movies and music have had increased sales thru the internet sharing.
they are just lying to say otherwise.
its all good, I refuse to purchase any of these products and many others will too, and before long the market will fail.
but, perhaps never there are alot of sheep out there. but oh well, im not buying the junk they offer.
Look on the bright side, for usenet they can take down the nzb indexers but you can still use “supersearch” directly from your usenet client.
Also there wont be any of these “problems” with going after uploaders and downloaders because everything is encrypted via 256bit SSL and all usenet logs and files are deleted after 365 days (if you use giganews).
There is no way in hell they can screw you for downloading from usenet if you use encyption because quite simply even your ISP cant see what you are downloading.
Sure useing an indexing site does make finding things alot easier and filters out alot of the spam from usenet but taking out nzb indexers will never ever get usenet to go away if the TPB went down tomorrow alot of torrents would stop working if a usenet server / provider went down tomorrow it wouldnt matter there are simply to many servers all mirroring the same information.
Several independent studies have already verified that file sharers are their best customers. Mainly because file sharers try stuff before they buy it. If it’s trash they don’t spend money on the crap. If it’s good, they want the quality of the physical cd, not that 128 bit trash that is being passed off as quality.
Like poster #35, I’ve went on boycott. I won’t pay outrageous prices for low quality tunes. Nor will I support those industries whose practices I don’t agree with. When sue’em all started, they said good bye to me as a customer. When the MPAA joined that movement, they went on the list as another boycotted.
I won’t pay for music till they change their tune about business, I won’t buy movie tickets, PPV, nor rent movies.
That’s my expression of how I feel about their business methods. You should do the same and hit them where they understand it…in the wallet.
didn´t they learned anything out of operation baylout? And that was just a warning…
Firefox assists in copyright infringement, I can use it to access The Pirate Bay! CLOSE THAT SHIT DOWN!
#36 – Thundernews doesn’t keep ANY logs. That’s why I use them. I was a Giganews user until I found out how long they keep logs for.
As they start to gather steam and cause indexing sites to close, you would think that new indexing sites would start popping up from countries like Russia.
No evidence of this so far though, is there some reason why this won’t happen ?
The main problem is that too many sites are run by cowards that drop their trousers and bend over at the first sign of a complaint. (Yes, [not so] Splendid, I’m including your yellow a$$ too) If you’re going to run a tracker or NZB site you need to be a little more hardcore and tell antipiracy groups to f*** off. Learn how to host your site where they can’t touch you. If you don’t have a realistic grasp of the big picture, stay out. Or to use the old saying, if you can’t stand the heat, stay the hell out of the kitchen. We don’t need any fair weather pirates, thank you. There’s already too many in admin positions as it is.
@ 34…
Are you crazy? I converted, now on death I get 40 virgins and a free alarm clock. I was looking forward to meeting St.Paul at the gates but whachagonnado.
40 midgets or normal ones or beautiful ones or it depends on the alarm clock setting?
All they have to do is target the uploaders. They don’t log downloaders, but they are obliged to log posters. Usenet is no use if there is nothing to download.
So be it. They need to be punished. Why can`t they get along like everybody else.
I can see why there trying to bring down Torrent websites, but then again these people are just looking for a quick buck, so I say Fuck you BREIN.
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