Mininova Faces Legal Action: Filter or Else
Written by Ernesto on May 19, 2008No torrent site on earth is more popular than Mininova. Surprisingly, however, all the legal pressure seems to have been focused on sites such as The Pirate Bay. Mininova - against all the odds - appears to have stayed under the radar. All that changed today as Mininova is now facing legal action by Dutch anti-piracy agency, BREIN.
BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit responsible for shuttering or forcing torrent sites such as Demonoid overseas, has announced that it will take BitTorrent-behemoth Mininova to court. BREIN hopes the court will force Mininova to filter its search results, so that all .torrent files which may point to unauthorized content are removed.
Mininova is currently the largest BitTorrent site with over 30 million unique visitors per month. Mininova displays user submitted torrents and carries legitimate premium content from publishers such as CBC. Unlike The Pirate Bay, the site does not have their own BitTorrent tracker.
It transpires that BREIN and Mininova have been secretly trying to reach a mutually beneficial agreement for more than a year now, but when one side believes they are acting within the law and the other side believes the opposite, a legal clash seems inevitable.
Erik Dubbelboer, one of the co-founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that Mininova will not cave in to pressure from BREIN. He expects to have more details about the upcoming lawsuit later this week: “We will proceed to court with full confidence. We operate within the law, as we maintain our ‘notice and take down’ policy. That is, we remove search results if a copyright holder asks us to.”
Sites like YouTube operate in a similar manner - if the site receives a demand from a copyright holder that it should take content down, it does so under its DMCA obligations and there is no further action. Mininova doesn’t even host any unauthorized content, only .torrent files, which should make it even less of a target than YouTube. Typically, BREIN doesn’t see it that way.
Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, said that Mininova’s business model is based on illegal activity. “A notice and take down procedure is absolutely insufficient for a site that makes use of unauthorized files, structurally and systematically,” he added.
The announced legal action will focus on the question whether Mininova has to filter their search results or not. BREIN wants Mininova to install such a filter, Mininova on the other hand doesn’t want to censor the search results. The outcome of the case is likely to have a huge impact on the future of other BitTorrent sites, and even sites such as Google and YouTube.
Previously: The Pirate Bay Enters List of 100 Most Popular Webites
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103 Responses
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The distribution cost of electronic media is zero.
Mininova helps users to find this media.
If the dutch courts want to stop the electronic distribution of media they should un-invent the internet.
Otherwise they can’t win especially with open source java friend to friend anonymous p2p file sharing sites growing in number e.g. Dargens http://www.Dargens.com .
This one has been a long time coming. The cozy arrangement that Mininova has had with BREIN has seen BREIN chasing off most of their competitors. Now they have at last turned on Mininova.
They claim they are just indexers, yet they have active moderation and encourage uploading of torrent links.
Mininova’s past arrogance has left them at risk, shame, but it was inevitable.
Go Mininova!
Show those scumbags what the torrent world is made of!
@19 - Uh and 13 - C Urchin
as we have already established, torrent files are not copyrighted, therefore torrent sites need not “ban copyrighted material from their search results”, since there is no copyrighted material to ban.
OMG i hope they never die Mininova is the best torrent website in the world. I can’t believe this is happening they should start asking for donations to their website. Pray
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1379457
–Robb Topolski
isohunt >>>>>>>>> mininova in my book, less moderation and user comments but a lot of more hits
> “If the pirate community believes so strongly in what they are doing, and of the benefits of p2p, they should ban copyrighted material from their search results, and use p2p to demonstrate how musicians and film studios who allow their work to be distributed for free benefit from having their work distributed for free. The RIAA, CRIA, etc. can’t bother you then. Let the two ideologies fight it out.”
We like to share. Copyright is in the way of sharing, so we don’t recognize copyright.
@Dave: That’s true, but as long as we’re discussing Mininova… and besides, the elitism of private sites gives me teh hives.
their domain is registered at godaddy. case closed.
I laugh at these people…really. Date and software will ALWAYS be cracked and distributed. If no one way, then another.
Some 1337 haxzor should hack the database of “brain”.
@42
With most jobs, you are paid when your job is complete. In the music work, it just doesn’t work that way. You are paid nothing for your recordings, unless you can sell copies of them. The “if I build a bridge, I don’t get paid when someone drives across it” is a very silly (and very common) argument. If you are hired to build something or do something, that is a work-for-hire. Apples and Oranges.
Copyrights allow for a system where a work that took a great deal of time and effort can be sold for a small amount of money to a large amount of people.
Without copyright, musicians would depend on the Wealthy Patron system where musicians write songs made-to-order for rich people. Of course, this essentially eliminates freedom from music, because musicians will have to write music to appease their Patron.
I’m no accounting guru, but if BREIN is a private association, would it not be possible to do a hostile takeover and destroy the company ? Buy it outright, and kill it.
I don’t know the facts, and I certainly don’t mean to offend the good Dutch people, but how big can BREIN possibly be ? Surely a coordinated effort by the major trackers and search engines could amass enough funds to acquire and annihilate BREIN, which has been so far the most annoying and treacherous enemy of BitTorrent. No American association comes close to BREIN’s disruptive activities and overt ties with corrupt officials. No, not even the RIAA/MPAA.
Leave mininova alone! its the best site, in the spirit of bittorrent, far better than the piratebay
http://www.painfullback.com/
I think Brein could not have found seeds for his torrent download. Thats why the team got angry with mininova……:)
I think Brein would not have found seeds for its torrents. Thats why the team got angry with mininova ha ha……:)I think these guys(BREIN) dont have any other job other than hindering the best sites….
Latest news:
BREIN sees legal action to dig out Benjamin’s Franklin remains and sue him for discovering electricity “Without electricity [they: BREIN, MPAA say] there would be no piracy”
copyright!s finished.
:::sharez::: is the way now(s)
thanI3rs
c)t[]rr3nt s!t3s
Why dont they focus on going after the murderers in in Sudan who kill innocent in Darfur!
heh: Without copyright, musicians would depend on the Wealthy Patron system where musicians write songs made-to-order for rich people. Of course, this essentially eliminates freedom from music, because musicians will have to write music to appease their Patron.
Copyright was abolished at the dawn of the filesahring era. We already live in a world without it.
So where’s this Wealthy Patron system of yours? When was freedom eliminated from music? Darn, I must have missed it.
Oh… Wait, I know. You’re spouting bullshit, because here we are about a decade after the demise of copyright, and musicians are still making money the same way they’ve always been. As it turns out, all they have to do is put a price-tag on their fucking music and people will buy it(and pay to see it live).
Except now, a growing number of musicians are savvy enough to cut themselves loose from the MAFIAA parasites sucking the life out of them, and take content distribution into their own hands. But that’s really neither here nor there.
My point is this; go take your RAH-RAH-RAH copyright cocksucking elsewhere, Mr. Cheerleader.
First off torrent files contain 0 copyrighted info. I am so sick of retarded groups that do not even know what the hell they are talking about crying bloody murder over their theoritcal dollars. The site does no run any trackers as such has 0 power to remove the torrents from anything other then there index site which is pretty much up to the users.
Sorry AHOLES but a torrent file contains 0 copyrighted data except maybe a title. And you can’t bitch about indexing sites until you make google which has more links to torrents then any other site on the web stop linking to torrent files. Which is most likely impossible since google bots are constantly searching the net for any and all data.
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