Anti-Piracy Outfit Shuts Down 75 Torrent Sites
Written by Ernesto on December 12, 2008The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN claims to have taken down 75 BitTorrent trackers today. Although most of the sites were relatively small and private communities, together they had more than half a million registered users. This is the first time that so many sites have been taken offline at once.
The trackers that were taken down were all aimed at Dutch users, including Allmypower.org, Luckytorrents, Allmymovies, Digi-tor.org and Seederstor.org. BREIN claims that the sites were part of an organized piracy ring, and plans to report them to the FIOD-ECD – the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police.
FIOD-ECD is dedicated to chasing down people alleged to be involved in fiscal, financial and economic fraud – usually major criminals. What evidence BREIN has against these alleged ‘criminal organizations’ is unknown. Similar to the OiNK case, the user donation models that most sites operated are being seen as money making schemes.
“This is clearly an organization that aims to make money illegally, with a chain of smaller sites that aims to systematically steal the creative work of others,” Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN commented. He further said that the people who are responsible for the sites will be held accountable for the damages copyright holders suffered.
This is not the first time that BREIN has alleged that a P2P site has been involved in organized crime, the same thing happened before with Releases4U and ShareConnector cases. The FIOD-ECD failed to provide any evidence to prove ShareConnector was facilitating copyright infringement nor enough to prove that either organization was criminal in nature.
At first glance this seems to be a huge victory for BREIN, but the whole takedown operation probably took only one email. From the looks of it, the sites were all hosted at amenworld.com. The webhosting company, which cooperated with BREIN before, is likely to have responded to a takedown request, pulling the sites offline all at once.
Whether the sites will remain offline is unknown at the moment. Only last week BREIN managed to take the Bulgarian tracker RARBG offline. This turned out to be a short term success, as the site reappeared on a Swedish server only two days later. It’s hard to kill a hydra.
Previously: Ubisoft Dumps Prince of Persia DRM, Remains Skeptical
Next: OiNK Admin and Uploaders Appear in Court
66 Responses
Boooooooo! Down with BREIN!!!
They just don’t learn, do they?
a good day for content creators everywhere.
hopefully sever enough sentences will be handed down so as to discourage future file stealing.
#3 You’re a fucccking douse bag!?
Better to have them take down the websites, than go after the kids who download though. Most of us know what its like to be a broke college kid.
I’ll support the artists but never the companies.
Oh Noes! It’s the end of filesharing!
For the music industry, the ‘anti-piracy outfits’ and the record labels are the ones that are really guilty of stealing from the artists. They are obsolete middlemen, using their power and fortunes of old to abuse the legal system by any means possible to stay alive as long as they can. They are in turn being used by ‘anti-piracy outfits’ that are cashing in on the artists money dispite never having accomplished anything of significant consequence since napster was shut down.
The music industry is in for some rough times, but I can’t wait until the artists have freed themselvs from these parasites.
Organized piracy ring? You kiddin’ me? :P Are they real gagstas’ now or what?
Conclusion : avoid Amen hoster and choose Leaseweb ^^
what, no comments about how great private trackers are this time? :)
I do not think that a proper response to this is to “sit across a table and politely discuss with them on this issue.” No – what is needed is direct action. Direct action is necessary at this moment.
In fact, surely more effective action is required. Do you really think it is okay to let BREIN get away with this kind of nonsense?
Roze
Someone needs to fuck ‘brein’ (translated means brain, clearly it’s missing there) and amenhosting up the arse, and #3 too. Douchebags out for the money/fame/little meaning in their pathetic lives.
hrm
didnt i tell you to buy eggs?
well thats mwill make us all eggorists
“what are you in for”
….
“i’m an eggorist”
“a good day for content creators everywhere.”
Not this content creator. I want my stuff shared as widely as possible. Every download is an ad for my work, an opportunity to reach a new audience and a huge compliment.
This is another terrible day for content creators and a victory for the parasites who try to control our creations for their own selfish commercial gain. But I have confidence we’ll win out in the end.
oh, i’m sorry, i should have been more specific…
this is a good day for PROFESSIONAL content creators everywhere.
there. fixed.
#4 Don’t feed the trolls
FKUC you BIEN!
“this is a good day for PROFESSIONAL content creators everywhere.”
“#4 Don’t feed the trolls”
Usually good advice Kirby, but Anonymous is playing devil’s advocate and that’s handy for the discussion.
Professional artists are the ones being most ripped off. Sure 1% of them are portrayed as living opulent life-styles, but the vast majority are poorly compensated as profits are channelled away from the actual creators into the pockets of corporate hierarchies and share holders.
File sharing lets you cut out all that parasitic crap and go straight to the audience, which is an enormous saving in the cost of production. It also removes the corporate bullshit factor and frees up creative control.
If you’re a popular professional artist and you can’t work out how to generate income without some exploitative company holding your hand, you could view things like record company marketing as a positive service I guess. (Although if your art needs advertising to promote it, it’s probably not that good in the first place.) If you’re an unpopular professional artist you should probably switch professions.
The issue here is control. Companies have been robbing artists of control of their art for years. File sharing is restoring that control by making the artist valuable, not the art. Of course that disagrees with those who’ve been profiteering and it would be peculiar if such people didn’t have a cry which is no doubt how we got to this discussion point.
Whether Anonymous likes it or not, file sharing is a revolution and it’s here to stay. In a century, this argument will be as quaint as using leeches to treat headaches. I wish it was that quaint now, but some people still insist on living in the past.
This is really much less than the headlines make it out to be. There was one owner of 75 diffferent sites/domain names – none of which anyone has ever heard of.
When a single dominant P2P site like Sharereactor, Suprnova, or Oink goes down, that’s significant news. But having a chain of 75 tiny insignificant sites (all run off one server) go down … pffft.
@17 : “If you’re a popular professional artist and you can’t work out how to generate income without some exploitative company holding your hand, you could view things like record company marketing as a positive service I guess.
Please provide a list of artists that generate income without the help of a record label. Please explain how artists are better off at a small label which pays them less than a major label. Please provide examples of artists that have somehow been heard of by millions without a marketing campaign.
Else your ramblings sound like a crock of shit with no relation to what happens in reality.
“The issue here is control. Companies have been robbing artists of control of their art for years. File sharing is restoring that control by making the artist valuable, not the art.”
Despite your view – which btw is uninformed as you are not an artist – the majority of artits aspire to a contract with a record label. This is my view and unlike your is based on what happens in reality. Considering that the majority of artists who are good enough to provide entertainment to others want to earn a living off their art how is filesharing helping? The facts are that having files in some kind of CDN such as P2P doesn’t mean jackshit – very few people will download it without hearing about it first – through marketing and promotion or through reputation, which was gained through marketing and promotion.
Also how the hell you think that filesharing is “restoring control” to artists is beyond me. If anything it’s removing control from the artists compared to traditional distribution methods.
@19 Dec 13, 2008 at 06:02 by Anonymous
Like as if you are any more informed than anyone else. At least you could use common sense: the traditional methods (i. e. using “labels”) do not give artists any control at all. Anything is better than the “traditional distribution methods.”
Also, the fact is that P2P has a very real potential of replacing marketing and promotion and reputation – if it were to be accepted as mainstream.
“Please provide examples of artists that have somehow been heard of by millions without a marketing campaign.”
This is not an example of music without marketing, but there has been an example for a computer game – called Touhou, which had no marketing whatsoever, but which is very popular in Japan.
Of course, for more examples, there would have to be other people to fill you in on it, since I do not know much about culture anywhere in general, but the fact still stands that this one example disproves the idea that “marketing campaigns are NECESSARY for popularity.”
“Considering that the majority of artists who are good enough to provide entertainment to others want to earn a living off their art how is filesharing helping?”
Wrong. The majority of artists want to have their work seen. Moreover, it is definitely helping since it is promoting their work.
Roze
@3 + 4
feed they hydro! make you own bittorent site!
the sites taken down were all insignificant and unknown.
“Else your ramblings sound like a crock of shit with no relation to what happens in reality.”
Why are you so threatened by this issue?
“which btw is uninformed as you are not an artist”
I’m a writer. I’ve earned 8 grand this year from my work. Nothing big league, but I think I’ve earned the right to call myself a professional writer. Feel free to continue being an expert on what I do if it makes you happy, but I don’t think it will do much for your own chances of looking informed.
Well said 19.
“Of course, for more examples, there would have to be other people to fill you in on it, since I do not know much about culture anywhere in general”
————————————
LOL!
of course you don’t, roze! you live in your parent’s basement and probably aren’t even old enough to drive.
also, stop trying to speak for professional artists. you don’t know any.
another thing to consider on the cinema side of things, is without big studio backing, 7 of the 10 most downloaded movies this year would never have been made.
(which could almost be a good thing if you consider “zohan” would never have seen the light of day but i digress…)
So according to lanva.lt, if 75 sites were brought down and 10 more will pop up for each one that was shut down… 75 * 10 = EPIC FAIl
was anyone a member of any of these sites? were they any good? have we got a full list of the 75?
these are the details that would make this story interesting for me.
@26:
I’d agree! What about a list with all trackers “taken down”.
Well that just seems silly. It seems highly probable that most of the 500,000 people will end straight up on 1 single tracker. Then it will be a super tracker with 500,000 more suporters. Well try takeing that down.
Anyone who watched Babylon 5 will probably remember when that guy who worked with the shadows said something like “we knock down the ant hills and then they grow back better, stronger and bigger” well that will probably happend with those sites. Only theyre will probably be 1 big one as they are all on the same side, stand for the same thing and got knocked down at the same time.
Looks like that company who killed those site will have some problems soon.
Oh and @3 sorry to be bitching at you about your english but you made a typo, Um its called “file sharing” not “file stealing”. Here I will give you an example (say I brought a cd and I put it on the stereo when someone came over so they could hear it and im shareing) well then whats the diference if I just upload it to them and share it. If I can share a cd with someone (For example brother/sister) well why can’t I share it over the modern internet.
Maybe you need to make music or whatever then do concerts and make millions like that. Anyways people like apple with itunes rip music makers off and pay them next to nothing.
i found pictures of Ashley!
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/3019/ashleythetorrentfreakbomh8.jpg
Ashley we love you
Plenty more sites will replace these ones
@ Az
Excellent posts there.
@ mafiaa troll sounds like greg gutfeld…
BREIN did right. Making money with a chain of piracy sites has nothing to do with p2p. Peer to peer means “equal to equal.”
All BitTorrent sites which are making money are owned by people that have no need or interest inpeer-to-peer file sharing.
They are making money, they shall pay, there’s no rationale out of this and all this troll noise here won’t reduce a day off their prison time or heavy fines.
——————————–
Torrentfreak can’t show sympathy for piracy-for-profit sites and still call itself a peer-to-peer news blog. You’re shooting on your own foot.
BREIN did right. Making money with a chain of piracy sites has nothing to do with p2p. Peer to peer means “equal to equal.”
All BitTorrent sites which are making money are owned by people that have no need or interest inpeer-to-peer file sharing.
They are making money, they shall pay, there’s no rationale out of this and all this troll noise here won’t reduce a day off their prison time or heavy fines.
——————————–
Torrentfreak can’t show sympathy for piracy-for-profit sites and still call itself a peer-to-peer news blog. You’re shooting on your own foot.
Seaway
I agree…that is some epic fail they have there lol would have left them alone
@Anonymous
“very few people will download it without hearing about it first – through marketing and promotion or through reputation, which was gained through marketing and promotion.”
This is only true to a certain extent and is only relevent to the main stream manufactured shite that’s not worth a dime anyway. The majority of music I download is not available simply by visiting the local megathief music store. Most of the artists i download i’ve never hear of before and if I like their stuff I tell others about them.
Marketing is nothing more than a tool used by the mainstream to push utter crap on stupid people who will buy anything if you advertise it enough, it does not mean they have talent and it certainly does not mean that it is worth buying, at least if you have any sense.
Shutting down filesharing has nothing to do with protecting revenue, it’s about controlling markets. Its about controlling how, where, and to whom they are distributing to. Its about controlling which artists are promoted and which are tossed asside regardless of their “tallent”. If they can control p2p they can control exactly what music they want you to hear, what films they want you to see becuase they have no interest in anyone except that which they endorse and control and are unhappy that there are others who are not under their control that the ability to compete and who threaten their cartel.
75 down… 75 will take their places.
Information wants, and always will be, to be free.
@26 Dec 13, 2008 at 07:38 by freetard
“you live in your parent?s basement and probably aren?t even old enough to drive”
Huh? Where in the world did you pull that from? Sounds like you are desperate enough to make up this random thing.
“stop trying to speak for professional artists. you don?t know any.”
Like as if you know any more.
“without big studio backing, 7 of the 10 most downloaded movies this year would never have been made.”
What about those other 3? It stands to reason that if a movie is worth making, it will be made regardless of whether a big studio backs it or not – so the only reason why it would be necessary is to push a movie to be more popular (through marketing) than it is actually worth.
@37 stfu
Indeed, I think that what the major marketing is trying to do is trying to fool an unknowing population into knowing buying their stuff, even if it is trash. At least P2P has the good intent of not pushing stuff on people – which is why the current culture based on marketing wants to shut it down, to retain control on what people see.
@35 jaded
We don’t know whether they are profiteering from the BitTorrent or not. We only know that they are funded through donations – and that does not imply that there is profiteering.
Roze
Torrents is for t4rds anyway!
Real men like me use FTP. :)
Good job BREIN, clean out the scum that downloads illegally! :)
Said it before, say it again.
This is not about ‘illegal’ file sharing. This is all about the complete failure of the copyright industry to come to terms with the realities of 21st century technology and economics.
The rights and wrongs of file sharing make absolutely no difference whatsoever to those realities. People can bitch and whinge as much as they like about how illegal and immoral they believe file sharing is, but while there is still an internet then it will never go away, nor even diminish; quite the contrary, it is just going to keep expanding. The sooner the copyright industry accepts that and adapts to it, the better off we will all be (except maybe for certain parasitic fat cats at the top of that industry).
There are some interesting parallels to the utterly failed ‘war on drugs’.
Wow thats alot of sites for a single time slot..
http://www.petfoodz.info/
-Yatti
If it’s copyrighted, the artist does not want it shared. Otherwise he would have told the label to screw off. Filesharing does a great deal for artists who are looking for an alternative to labels.
However, what law is being broken if there is no copyright on the material? Who in these fileshare networks respects that copyright as a request to not freely distribute their work?
I think it’s clear that BREIN’s PURPOSE and their GOALS are two different things. I think they should be burned at the stake.
I think the biggest problem, is that it is hard to produce anything without a good label or at least the elements thereof. I see many up and coming artists on myspace and as soon as they have some popularity, the record labels are sending over offers of contracts and whatever. I think it is ultimately up to the artists to take a stand in order to reject these leeches.
In the meantime, fileshare networks should do one of the following: avoid breaking the law (thank you Mr. Obvious), hide themselves better, or maybe ally and come up with a better plan (become this “organized crime” ring they fantasize about).
@43 XBangittyX
“I think the biggest problem, is that it is hard to produce anything without a good label or at least the elements thereof. I see many up and coming artists on myspace and as soon as they have some popularity, the record labels are sending over offers of contracts and whatever. I think it is ultimately up to the artists to take a stand in order to reject these leeches.”
The thing is that this copyright system supports a system where the labels simply take advantage of an unknowing population.
I think that it is most important not to submit to an unjust authority, but rather to come up with a better plan to resist them. To “hide away” is the same thing as submission.
Roze
Theyll be back on SwedishHosts
just like RARbg
@Roze
They are NOT doing anything illegal Submission and getting away with is has nothing to do with it
Moron
Roze:
“It stands to reason that if a movie is worth making, it will be made regardless of whether a big studio backs it or not.”
————————————–
that does not stand to reason. in fact, almost nothing you say “stands to reason”. you are obviously speaking out of your ass. without copyright, without the big movie studios, movies like the dark knight or iron man or any other big budget blockbuster would not be made.
FUCK ALL ARTISTS
YOU CREATE
….THE PROBLEM
“all this troll noise here won’t reduce a day off their prison time or heavy fines.”
An interesting point, but what prison times? What heavy fines? Using my own country as an example, Australia, enforcement agencies have demonstrated an almost pathological reluctance to prosecute so-called offenders.
Sure the laws exist, but if they’re never enforced, how effective are they? And more importantly, why won’t agencies carry out any arrests? Simply, they don’t want to. These laws are being breeched by everyday citizens with no other criminal inclination. Lots of everyday citizens. Millions and millions of them.
I was down the pub the other night and happened to run into a couple of Attorney General’s copyright lawyers. After a few beers and a robust discussion on piracy I asked them casually how often they used bit-torrent. One looked at me blankly and had no idea what I was talking about. The other piped up his download collection was huge before realising what he was saying, at which point he wisely clammed up.
If those responsible for enforcing the laws simply refuse to do it and those responsible for drafting the laws are themselves either completely ignorant or participating in illegal file transfers, then it’s fairly obvious where this will all end and it’s not with arrests and fines.
good job BREIN
im glad that they busted those criminal scum!
i hope they are going to prison
its the end of the internet everyone hit the power button this party is over!
but wait what’s that in the back ground omfg….it it’s yet another
p2p site we will never die we will never give up…and they will never take us alive
Number 7 has it in 1………….
jaded: “All BitTorrent sites which are making money are owned by people that have no need or interest inpeer-to-peer file sharing.”
Bandwidth costs money, you fool. Most Torrent sites literally couldn’t afford to exist if it weren’t for adclicks and/or donations. And so what if they turn a profit, anyway?
An MPAA sockpuppet: “without copyright, without the big movie studios, movies like the dark knight or iron man or any other big budget blockbuster would not be made.”
Bullshit.
Filesharing didn’t stop Iron man from making a killing at the box office, and it didn’t stop The Dark Knight from raking in one billion dollars worldwide, either. Ergo, we would still have big budget blockbusters if copyright didn’t exist.
And since we’d still have big budget blockbusters, blockbusters being the key word here(are you following me so far, Shortbus?), we’d also still have big movie studios.
Try again.
“without copyright, without the big movie studios, movies like the dark knight or iron man or any other big budget blockbuster would not be made.”
There will be as long as there are people supporting them. Even if it turns into an “optional payment,” if people want to support it, they will. For example, people in the U.S. spend a lot of money on church donations – because people want to support their churches. After all, for what other reason do people pay to go to movie theatres currently? Is it not to support the movie? The Dark Knight had made lots of money because many people wanted to support the movie. If there were no copyright, people would still support the movie all the same, by going to the theatres, etc.
Roze
I thought it was better to use private sites?
I bet most of those sites will come back bigger and better. Yaay anti-piracy!
While I have never heard of any of these sites, it always sucks when groups go offline.
this guy was selling invites and making more then simple donation profit here and there he had a scam to use multiple sites to make cash and a lot of it.
YA NEVER DO THIS TO GET RICH
if ya make a few bucks so what its not your fault people are generous however if your doing things to intentionally make cash like selling invites and selling GB and selling this and selling that , either dont ask for donations or goto prison ya just should not make a living off it.
from story:
What evidence BREIN has against these alleged ‘criminal organizations’ is unknown. Similar to the OiNK case, the user donation models that most sites operated are being seen as money making schemes.
By this logic all Charity Organizations are criminal.
from story:
From the looks of it, the sites were all hosted at amenworld.com.
With a name like that of course the site will bend over faster than a Catholic altar boy
screw brein and anyone who dosnt support p2p :P
beeatches
You cant win! Becouse
My name is Legion: for we are many!
Take down 75, 750 more pop up
One of the few things what people have in common, no matter wich race/skin color/religion/nationality is sharing over the internet. They cant take this away from us
actually.. this is not a bad thing. there are many small torrent sites out there that DO earn money through piracy.
How many Torrent sites have they shut down how many replace them.
This anti-piracy outfit recognise a money spinner, the professional content creator just inherited another parasite.
File sharing is a reality you cant put the genie back in the bottle, I suppose the anti-piracy outfitt is just damage limitation know.
Modern Day Police State. Conspiracies everywhere. Can I find one moral soul among them? I doubt it God. Hey, to make some very good money online, check out
www dot thespidersystem dot ws
screw you all who ever is for this brein dude,we as the people have free rights to do what ever. long live the net! sit on a big one mpaa!
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