Brein Scares a Couple More P2P Hobbyists

Written by Ernesto on September 29, 2006 

The Dutch Anti-Piracy organization BREIN has successfully “taken down” 19 filesharing websites. They now reached a total of 103 this year. Among their new trophies are at least two BitTorrent sites; torrentsplanet.com and easytorrent.eu.

Although BREIN has no legal power, they can (just like every other person) threaten to sue the site admins.

Till today, no BitTorrent site admin has been taken to court in the Netherlands. However, BREIN does send letters to the owners of the “infringing” sites, or their ISP’s, stating that they could face up to four years in prison or a $54,000 fine. These intimidating letters have proven to be an effective strategy to scare P2P hobbyists away. It’s an easy way out. Sending a letter with a claim doesn’t involve having to actually put forth proof that someone is actually engaging in illegal behavior.

This is how it works from thereon: BREIN promises to drop the case if the site owners, take down their site, publicly admit that they infringed on copyright, promise to never do it again, and (if possible) hand over all available information on their members.

Another tactic BREIN has used is identifying the domain holder of a site, running a background check, and visiting the person at his/her home address. This has become one of the most effective ways in which BREIN puts pressure on its “victims.” We reported on this when it actually happened with the 20 year old operator of TorrentIt (previously 123torrents). After that visit, TorrentIt completely stopped serving torrents.

Stay tuned.

Previously: Pirates Parties To Conquer Europe

Next: P2P Art

8 Responses

1 Sep 30, 2006 at 01:59 by Bobulon

I hope they come to my house, I have no neighbours and a basement I can keep them in until their corpses rot away.

2 Sep 30, 2006 at 05:07 by Fri22le

Smoking weed in Holland is legal and for sharing some movies and games ppl can go to jail for 4 years!! That is really crazy!!

3 Sep 30, 2006 at 19:45 by len

“Victims”… oh fuck off. People know what they’re doing in this world. If you can’t stand the risk, don’t do it. I’ve admined torrent sites before. You’re not a victim if the person you’re screwing over does something about it.

4 Oct 01, 2006 at 12:32 by LondonOntGuy

I bet these are the same bastards that killed Seedler. That was a really cool site, if Torrentspy didn’t have what I wanted, then Seedler almost always did.

5 Oct 01, 2006 at 15:22 by td

We need strategies to avoid Brein and other antip2p orgs taking sites down….
(Don’t ask me I don’t know)

6 Oct 30, 2006 at 09:13 by dutchgrass

Sad but hey there is NO stopping us . FTP P2P will always live.

And euh Fri22le… Smoking weed in Holland is NOT legal it is tolerated just like it’s citizens ;-)

7 Nov 08, 2006 at 16:08 by fahad

hiiiiiiiiii guys any one have a shareaza or ares

8 Jun 30, 2007 at 06:10 by Mohammed B

Brein are just wasting their time. Their building will be taken down before P2P disappears.

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