BitTorrent Tracker Hosting Illegal Says Dutch Court
Written by Ernesto on July 04, 2008Leaseweb, the former ISP of BitTorrent trackers such as Demonoid, What.cd and Waffles.fm lost the appeal against the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The Amsterdam court concluded that Leaseweb has to permanently shut down the BitTorrent tracker everlasting.nu, and hand over the admin’s personal information.
Last year the court decided that Leaseweb had to take down everlasting.nu and hand over the name and address of the owner because the site structurally facilitated copyright infringement, as pointed out by BREIN.
At the time Leaseweb was hosting dozens of torrent sites, including Demonoid, mybittorrent.com, btmon.com, btjunkie.org, seedpeer.com, what.cd and waffles.fm. Although Leaseweb decided to appeal the decision, the torrent sites were no longer welcome, and were asked to find a new ISP.
Yesterday the appeal was denied, as the Amsterdam court again ruled that everlasting.nu was facilitating copyright infringement by allowing their users to download copyrighted content via torrents hosted on their site.
Leaseweb’s defense argued that Everlasting was not facilitating copyright infringement, because the torrent files itself are not copyrighted. However, the judge ruled that this was irrelevant, since the files are an essential part of the download process.
Leaseweb’s lawyers further argued that the tracker is not necessary for the download process, that the torrents could be mislabeled, and that there are also BitTorrent clients that do not upload (downloading music and movies is legal in the Netherlands), but their arguments did not impress the judge either.
At the moment it is still unclear what this means for future cases, such as the upcoming court case between Mininova and BREIN. In the ruling the court places a lot of emphasis on the tracker, as an essential component of the infringement process. Mininova does not operate a BitTorrent tracker.
It is however very unlikely that Leaseweb will ever host a BitTorrent tracker again. The ISP that once was a safe haven for most torrent sites is most likely done fighting.
Previously: Indiana Gregg to The Pirate Bay: The Internet Police Are Coming
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60 Responses
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Never used everlasting.nu, but i hope they used common sense and gave the host crappy admin details.
Needless to say, they should be far away by the time BREINless try to get their slimy paws on them…
Totally crazy how much damage BREIN has been able to do in Amsterdam of all places… one would think that someone would toke up and the lights out for some of BREIN’s employees…
….sigh
stuff is changing rapidly here lately, it’s depressing
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wow I wonder how many safe havens are left?
i take it the judge knew nothing about bittorrent.
how unlucky for Leaseweb
Oh well, chances are, we’ll lose the battle over torrents. Of course, something new will be invented to replace it shortly thereafter.
Meh, move your tracker’s. A few of these cases seem to make it through the court system. Not nearly enough to make a dent though.
All this does is compel the geeks to find better, faster alternatives.
Props to Leaseweb for standing up for their clients rights.
J.
eh?, just move the site to a country where no one gives a damn… Ukraine for example..
They fell into a burning ring of fire
They went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
It burns, burns, burns
That ring of fire
That ring of fire
“wow I wonder how many safe havens are left?”
Plenty.
@9
I hope you paid royalities for posting that.
lol
oh gnoes its teh internet police!
-indiana gregg
‘The Jessica Simpson of the internet’
What we must do is we must embark on a letter-writing campaign and embark on protest campaigns against small anti-piracy targets, first, like commonsensemedia.org, which clearly expresses backwards sentiments: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/newsletter/archive.php?id=2003-09-12
BREIN is getting really annoying out here…
Get all those trackers to Sweden or something, where there aren’t any dumb.ss organizations like BREIN
I think what really needs to take place is a new underground network for tracker operaters…
Say you had a couple sites over the entire world… Use a virtual server platform in each one… If laws become a problem transfer from one site to the next over a VPN with the trackers only using a little down time.
What a joke BREIN is! They got lucky by getting a ignorant, technology stupid judge. I wish that judges would learn how about how the technology works before issuing a verdict!
so may i ask this bitterballen eaiting judge:
what is your opinion about the responsibility of google then?
Since searching for downloads using googles capabilities would then be an integral part of the illegal downloads too.
given the judges reason (as far it is accurately represented in Ernestos post here) needs google.nl close shop on august 1st?
IMO there should be a law in every internet connected country that does make it a violation of due process if the judge that rules about a topic has no serious clue about it!
if this technology ignorant judge has a bankrobber to sentence next week will he rule that Ford will declared illegal in .nl since the robber used an old ford mustang as getaway car.
Or will he sentence the head of konijklicht(sp?) cartography institue to go to jail with the robber too since his institute provided the robber with the streetmap he used to find the bank to rob?
If this judge would rule in a “real world”-case with the same reasoning he did in the “virtual world” I bet his superiours (unless they are mentally fucked up like him too) will ask him to retire ASAP!
Somebody please start a website dedicated to changing people’s minds about copyright. Commonsensemedia.org is one example of a group of people deluded about what is right and what is wrong:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/newsletter/archive.php?id=2003-09-12#story4
It is very important to change whatever minds we can so that we can establish a voting coalition. Somebody please do this.
And don’t just tell me to do this instead. By asking someone else to do th is, I have already made it clear that I am one who cannot do this. Nothing can ever begin by people saying “you do it instead” to all requests. I am making a request for someone to take action, and nothing can ever happen by telling me to do it instead.
Maybe the judge got a nice little beach house in return..
Well, the internet is used for downloading files, so it should be declared illegal, and all the providers should be taken to court.
After that, all PC manufacturers should be jailed, because the computers are used to download copyrighted materials from the internet.
And then, electricty should be denied to all ppl, as they might have a computer and start downloading stuff…
So here we are…in the stone age!
That’s good. We need to clean out the filth on the internet.
Nice! When are they going to take torrentbytes.net and torrentleech.org offline?
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( つ旦O そっし～♪＆挑戦界嫌動憂慮最業帯電
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