Smelling Blood, BREIN Targets Mininova, Torrentspy and Btjunkie
Written by enigmax on December 07, 2007Following the huge pressure it successfully put on LeaseWeb to shut BitTorrent sites, anti-piracy outfit BREIN smells blood as it casts a wider net to force other ISPs to shut down other huge sites, including the likes of Mininova, TorrentSpy and BTJunkie.
During the last month we’ve reported a few times on the likelihood that BREIN pressure would lead to a shuttering of BitTorrent sites at LeaseWeb. After LeaseWeb issued an ultimatum for BitTorrent sites to leave its hosting by December 1st, at least ten major sites left for hosting in new countries such as Sweden, while others felt that re-locating within the Netherlands would be acceptable, providing it was with another ISP.
BREIN director Tim Kuik is proud of these successes in The Netherlands, and although some sites have moved outside BREIN’s ‘jurisdiction’ by moving abroad, he is delighted that they have “swept the Dutch pavement clean” of torrent sites.
It seems that BREIN is not planning to stop yet, as Kuik once again threatens BitTorrent sites that are still hosted in The Netherlands: “If they do not disappear, civil legal action will follow, or even criminal legal action.”
So who will be their next target? The site Dutch site Tweakers.net is reporting that established names such as Torrentspy, mininova and Btjunkie may be targets shortly.
BREIN intends to use the everlasting.nu case to force ISPs to cough up torrent site admin’s details. However, Kuik admits the difficulties in tracking down the owners of many torrent sites as the administrators take extraordinary steps to hide their identities, including giving false details to their hosting provider. Clearly, even if BREIN gets information from the ISP, there’s every chance that these details are false, giving the site admins the chance to relocate and start again with a different host, possibly in a different country.
Last week TorrentFreak asked BREIN why they didn’t take action against sites like mininova. Their address is easy to find since they are a registered company in The Netherlands. Tim Kuik from BREIN did not want to comment on that question (scared they will lose?), but it now looks like they have shifted strategies, and target the ISPs now.
BREIN is about to start pressurizing other Dutch ISPs after their successes at LeaseWeb, who incidentally still host dozens of other BitTorrent sites. Kuik issued a veiled threat to ISPs who accept these anonymous accounts: “Hosting providers who do not check that their customer data is correct run the risk that they themselves could be held responsible for the actions of those customers.”
Previously: Police Extend OiNK’s Bail Date and Returns Servers, Wiped!
Next: The Pirate Bay Now Running on Opentracker
84 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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They would be doing the BT community a favor as the sites Mininova, Torrentspy and Btjunkie, are merely index sites and full of nothing but fakes anyway.
May they go away! They only give fake uploaders a job!
I’ve never had a problem with mininova..always gotten good stuff from there
@1 if you are downloading fakes from mininova YOU are doing something wrong ! i suggest reading :
http://torrentfreak.com/stop-downloading-fakes-and-junk-torrents-071204/
Mininova has pretty good moderation, Fakes are removed swiftly.
Also:
“swept the Dutch pavement clean”
Uh.. yeah, Thats one way to look at it I guess… You Do know that through the magics of the Internet those torrent sites aren’t actually gone right?. Physical location means nothing.
Mininova is one of the best public torrentssites you can run across. Instead of automaticly indexing sites for new torrents (like the other two) it is the users who have to add torrents.
I really have no idea what private tracker people (myself is one, but not so “I’m cool” as they) sees for bad in public trackers. Public trackers is great for newcomers to get used to torrentsites. It’s like The Scene thinks about the Bittorrent community. MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR!
Last week my wife and I dropped the kids off in the local mall’s parking lot and there we waited for their natural father to show up for there weekend visit. We handed the kids over, they got in the car, and it wasn’t until AFTER they were all back in his SUV did I realize he must have been drinking (maybe a 6-pack or so) and noticed empties in the SUV on the floor. He drove off after a little discussion so I called the cops, they did nothing. I called the cops in the next county over, they did NOTHING. So let me get this correct, The police forces of this world are more interested in protecting movie publishers and cracking down on little Bobby getting his next MP3 song to walk to school with than to stop a drunk driver with open containers and kids in the back? Hard to respect any police agency that puts this much effort into a so called crime when in many countries it is legal so long as you do not make a profit off downloading. Get back to real crime fighting and stop lobbying to make things a crime when they are not in some countries and shouldn’t be in the others.
I have more positive feedback about mininova then the tpb.
To What?, the majority of police are asswipes because really, who goes to work as a cop? Only dumb fucks with really low iq. Of course, like everywhere, there is a minority of really decent people working for the police, but I for myself, haven’t met any.
That drunk fuck should have had his face slaughtered for driving drunk with children. What a shit facce.
Good job Brein. instead of making those sites disappear you sweep them under the couch(other countries)!
This is how my wife cleans too and it’s highly effective *cough* *cough*
ps: btjunkie rules
pss: my favorite private torrent tracker is still going strong @ leaseweb, hahaha
You can blame BREIN for all those actions, but why not blame ourselves for not doing anything …
Flaming on blogs won’t help’,
Take action !
“So let me get this correct, The police forces of this world are more interested in protecting movie publishers and cracking down on little Bobby getting his next MP3 song to walk to school with than to stop a drunk driver with open containers and kids in the back?”
Nail on the head.
10 years and $250,000 fine for uploading a movie online before it’s release, and they are pushing to get that even stricker.
But let’s use their 10 year number ok? That’s 10 x 12 = 120 months for uploading a movie.
Going from this, a bit outdate, list for violent offenders:
http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/psatsfv.pdf
The average term for all violent offenders : 89 months.
Homicide : 149
Rape: 117
Kidnapping: 104
Robbery: 95
Sexual Assualt : 72
Assualt : 60
Think about that, homicide is the ONLY offence on that list that yeilds an average sentence LONGER than you’ll get for uploading a movie.
If I rape someone, I will usually get off 3 months before the guy who uploaded the next star wars movie.
If I violently rob someone at gun point, I’ll get off a kewl 25 months before the evil and dengerous uploader.
“I really have no idea what private tracker people (myself is one, but not so “I’m cool” as they) sees for bad in public trackers. Public trackers is great for newcomers to get used to torrentsites. It’s like The Scene thinks about the Bittorrent community. MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR!”
Let me explain it for you. Public trackers and sites like Suprnova, MiniNova, Demonoid, Torrentspy, and such are considered to be bad because it opened the whole community up to anyone with a web browser.
Before suprnova hit the scene, torrents were still a on a need to know basis for most. Those of us that have been at this game for awhile discovered them and toyed around. But low and behold, you get a bunch of giant well marketed sites making news on CNN and everyone and their brother is taking part.
The day I saw someone wearing a suprnova T shirt in my home town of middle of nowheres cannuckland, I knew torrents were about done, and I was 100% right.
Torrents are the exact opposite of the scene. The scene is dark, hard to find, almost impossible to get into, and fucking SAFE for their members.
Media attention is exactly what they don’t need or want. Then you’ve got tons of torrent sites, helping everyone pirate, people that plain just shouldn’t (how do I watch a rar file anyone?).
The backlash agains the public sites (ignoring the scene) is because they are just that, public. TOO accessable.
Christ, search for anything at google + torrent and you will get a freaking torrent download for it.
Private sites are a ‘little safer’ but not really, the difference being you can’t just walk into a private tracker swarm and get ips, private sites go to great lenghts to try to protect their users.
Beyond that, let us bring up Loki torrent, yes some of you will remember.
Great public site, lotsa stuff, wonderfull resource…. Until they got busted and handed over ALL THE IP LOGS of ALL THE USERS since day 1 to the authorities, then took the thousands of dollars donated to them for a legal defense fund and just fucked off.
If you want good scene releases from a public source I will obviously reccomend Newtorrents.info for that, as we take great care to only post up the goods, anything nasty or questionable doesn’t last long.
It’s comptetely public, but public uploads are disabled, you will only find reliable publically tracked SCENE torrents there, no homemade jim bob crappass dvdrips to kvcd there.
Which brings me to the end of my rant. Public sites like mininova are great if you have a brain, but if not, they can be a complete waste of your time. Fakes never last long there, but CRAP stays forever. Search for any movie on mininova, you’ll have to wade through a sea of KVCD crap encodes to find the scene release.
Public sites are great as they are easy to use, help you get started, and add more people to the swarm, the problem is, with public non registered sites, there is no reason for you to actually use torrents as they are intended.
This creates the leech and run situation we’re all in now. Starting on private sites was the best for my friends and I as we have grown used to maintaining a good ratio and actually SEEDING releases back to the swarm.
Public sites breed hit and run leechers that download, don’t seed, then pepper the forums with questions like :
Why is there no sound ?
How to I play a rar in WMP
Why does it say “Needed codec not installed” even tho I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A CODEC IS?
I use both private and public torrents, aswell as irc and scene ftp, it really doesn’t matter to me, but hopefully you can understand now some of the backlash to public sites, there are pros and cons, I just don’t think anyone wants to admit it’s a 50/50 split ;)
BREIN can suck my fat hairy …
[quote ]he is delighted that they have “swept the Dutch pavement clean” of torrent sites.[/quote]
Yeah…coz of the fucking MPAA and RIAA pressure.
Maggots
#11
way to preach to the converted. this is torrentfreak not fucking myspace.
@ PhishyBongwaters
Thanks for your comments. It’s nice to see a balanced view on the whole private/public issue. I’m fairly new to all this sharing stuff. There’s nothing worse than being looked down upon by “experienced” types. We all have to start somewhere, right?
For what it’s worth, I try to seed as long as possible after any download. If someone’s gone to the trouble of uploading, then it’s the least I can do in return.
Have a nice day all. :-)
good…my torrent bookmarks are getting out of control as it is, its an out of control monster….could use a few trimmed :)
#11 “The day I saw someone wearing a suprnova T shirt in my home town of middle of nowheres cannuckland, I knew torrents were about done, and I was 100% right.”
Is a load of shite. Millions more people have started using BT since Suprnova bit the dust.
Your post is elitist in the extreme.
Hey I have an idea:
Why doesn’t some torrent site make a successful case againt Brein, RIAA or what ever and then use that case in future problems?
Beat them in they own game!
not btjunkie… come on..
Last week TorrentFreak asked BREIN why they didn’t take action against sites like mininova.
you guys are clever giving em pressure take more sites down heh
[quote comment="233224"]Hey I have an idea:
Why doesn’t some torrent site make a successful case againt Brein, RIAA or what ever and then use that case in future problems?
Beat them in they own game![/quote]
Well… TPB have a case against some of the biggest companies after getting the knowledge that they hired hackers to hack their servers.
haha @ 11 TL;DR
[quote comment="233236"]Last week TorrentFreak asked BREIN why they didn’t take action against sites like mininova.
you guys are clever giving em pressure take more sites down heh[/quote]
What I asked was why they only picked the smaller guys and the ISPs, not the sites that actually have the resources to fight back.
[quote comment="233126"]Hard to respect any police agency that puts this much effort into a so called crime when in many countries it is legal so long as you do not make a profit off downloading. Get back to real crime fighting and stop lobbying to make things a crime when they are not in some countries and shouldn’t be in the others.[/quote]
Brein is not the police and the police are not involved in the majority of cases in the Netherlands.
In the case of Oink, Brein and the BPI fed the police with false information that led to the arrest of Alan Ellis. Alan has not been charged and I doubt that he will be - I cannot imagine what charges there can be against him.
If Alan is not charged then can the British police sue Brein for damages for feeding them false information in the first place?
@PhishyBongwaters
10 years is the maximum, you ever heard of someone getting 10 years for downloading? You can’t compare the averages of other convictions to the maximum of one, especially when the maximum for murder is life. Stop distorting facts.
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