Mininova Trial Due in Two Months
Written by Ernesto on March 16, 2009This year is an important one for the three largest BitTorrent sites. In common with The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, Mininova is also heading to court in a dispute with the entertainment industry. This May, the court will decide if the BitTorrent indexer has to actively filter content from the site.
The top three BitTorrent sites are all involved in at least one court case. The Pirate Bay trial has just ended and isoHunt is involved in a case against the MPAA, and one against CRIA – the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.
Mininova, based in The Netherlands, is up against local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which has a reputation for forcing torrent sites offline or to hosting in other countries. Through legal action, BREIN now hopes to convince the court that Mininova has to filter its search results, so that all .torrent files which may point to unauthorized content are removed.
The date for the trial was set today for May 20th, and it will take up only one day. Before it came to legal action, Mininova and BREIN have had lengthy discussions on how to deal with copyrighted content, but they never reached an agreement.
“The case wont say much about the legality of torrent sites, but it will give more insight into what measures BitTorrent indexers and similar services have to take in order to make sure that they don’t link to illegal content,” Mininova President Erik Dubbelboer told TorrentFreak. “In particular, it deals with the question of whether or not website owners have to actively filter content. In other words, is a notice and takedown policy sufficient or not.”
With the Pirate Bay case still fresh in everyone’s memory, a comparison between the two cases is easily made. However, they are more different than most people would assume. First off, Mininova’s case is against the company, not the individuals involved with the site. “The Pirate Bay case is a criminal trial, ours is civil,” Erik told TorrentFreak.
Erik further noted that Mininova doesn’t operate an open tracker and that they, as opposed to The Pirate Bay, take down torrents when they get an appropriate takedown request. “These are all big differences that clearly distinguish the two cases,” Erik said.
There is no doubt that the Mininova trial will set an important precedent for all other BitTorrent indexers hosted in The Netherlands. Erik and the other Mininova founders think they have the law on their side. “We have confidence in the outcome of the case and we don’t think Mininova will cease to exist,” he said.
To be continued.
Previously: Behind the Scenes at Mininova
Next: Major Opposition to New Swedish Copyright Law
69 Responses
We love you Mininova!
They do track torrents, so I could honestly care less about them.
I just wish mininova’s seach algarithm was used at the pirate bay :\
dont track*
Best of luck :)
Mininova is effectively just a search engine; they don’t even have an open tracker. I also don’t think that this particular court ruling will be that big of a deal if they rule it legal; that’s just like saying that Google is legal.
I don’t like MN’s profit-making. Nevertheless, these court cases are vital..
I never Used mininova nor Torrentspy because they were/are full of advertise and crap.
I don’t care whatever happen to them.
One is dead, nothing happen, let the second one die also :P
WHO CARES and let google.com die also loool :PPPPPPP
Don’t think Mininova’s trial will go so well. They are effectively EARNING cash… but luckily stupid lawyers went for TPB first. Seriously Lawl. Things might work out.
awww crap where am I going to dump my torrents now?
good luck with that :P
So u ppl think both TPB & Minninova will be defunct this year as the largest wrezhouse?
“I don’t like MN?s profit-making. Nevertheless, these court cases are vital…”
I concur: I, too, do not like Mininova’s profit-making, and I do not care about Mininova at all, yet, it is indeed true that it would be ridiculous regardless for the court to rule that Mininova is operating illegally.
i hope tpb and mn stay up, it keeps the heat and attn off the decent private trackers.
Mininova rocks
http://desip2p.blogspot.com/
mininova is god.
In digital files, there is no fence that says this is owned. In fact many such as the music industry purposely make it very tough to determine what is owned or not.
Even sites such that claim to help users of the net distinguish which are which don’t really know and often make mistakes because of the same confusion.
If a place that specializes in such has an extremely hard time, how can anyone else be able to do so but the owner?
The Netherlands!
Do you people know why they call it that?
SHEESH!
Get a clue kids!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I don’t like this trend to sue torrent-related sites. Probably it’s a right time to look for trackers inside of .onion and .i2p networks.
“I don’t like this trend to sue torrent-related sites. Probably it’s a right time to look for trackers inside of .onion and .i2p networks.”
You can connect to any tracker now through Tor – however it’s only the traffic to and from your client and the tracker that is “Torified” – client to client connections (ie. file transfers) are still completely open and hence doing this is pointless.
Running any sort of P2P inside Tor (ie. client to client traffic) is possible but highly inadvisable due to the way the network operates – it has the effect of slowing down the network for everybody.
I2P is a slightly different story: it has a significantly different network architecture that is designed to handle P2P completelt within the network: and indeed there implemetations of BT (I2PSnark), gnuttella (I2Phex) and edonkey2000 (iMule) that are running successfully now. They all suffer from lack of peers and content as well as being extremely slow – not unuseable but extremely inferior to any of those protocols used on the open net.
There is some buzz around about OneSwarm: surprisingly little considering how fast the takeup of this protocol has been, particuarly in Sweden of all places.
OneSwarm supposedly provides decent speed and anonynomity using modified Bittorrent code – might be something to check out if you wish.
““I don’t like MN?s profit-making. Nevertheless, these court cases are vital…”
I concur: I, too, do not like Mininova’s profit-making,”
Well, your both communist scum then – get freakin job and get off the pot you dumb retardos. People make money, it’s how we roll and screw your stupid communist bleatings about it.
You think Pirate Bay isn’t making at least as much money considering they have more page hits? They just don’t make legal tax returns, they launder the money through offshore bank accounts.
Stupid out of touch commuynist scum bags think everyone should live in rags and eat baked beans like you chose to, piss off commies.
Good Luck Mininova!
I’ll pray for u!
:hail:
@Levin
shut up dude….
Mininova actively makes a huge profit off distributing copyrighted works – they are no better than commercial pirates selling duplictaed disks on the high street.
I hope they are arrested, fined, jailed and have all their assets bought through these ill-gotten means confiscated.
Down with commercial piracy!
Couldn’t agree more: they are greedy commercial pirates and people shouldn’t use their service
They also actively distribute child pornorgraphy – anything to make a buck I suppose right. I hate these greedy people.
Good luck to them, but don’t forget Alan Ellis from OiNK is due in court in 6 days on the 23rd, but then they’ll probably adjourn it … again. They’re probably fabricating evidence that he’s actually Gary Glitter, Pol Pot and Sauron.
Why don’t these guys just shift operations to another country, a-la Demonoid or like how The Pirate Bay obviously will do if it gets shut down in Sweden. Or am I missing something here?
You cant actually be that stupid right? Or maybe your missing a large piece of your brain…
I guess there isn’t anyway to filter it smartly…
using the hashes of torrentfiles would restrict legal files too, and well torrent names do not matter at all
so it was a stupid request to begin with? or are there anyways to do it?
To all you lamers out there that believe TPB doesn’t make any money, go back to the cool dark cave that you crawled out of. That whole trial was nothing but a bunch of lies and they should all go to jail for contempt of court. If you think all of those ads on TPB are just pretty site decoration and not for monitary gain, your an idiot.
Mininova FTW.
@#21
” client to client connections .. are still completely open and hence doing this is pointless.” I will not really worry about this while VPN services will keep away my IP from MAFIAA. It will be time to worry when we hear that MAFIAA actually forced some VPN service to reveal real IP(they didn’t manage to do this yet, did they?). What I am worried about – trackers, they can be easily targeted. There are alternatives, like DHT, but as far as I can tell trackers are still best way to find the peers.
“OneSwarm supposedly provides decent speed and anonynomity using modified Bittorrent code – might be something to check out if you wish.”
Never heard about OneSwarm before. I’ll check it, thanks.
Also, I believe that with raise of popularity of different anonymous networks, popularity of clients that can download same files from different networks will raise despite techical differences of the networks. I cannot say for sure, but right now downloading same files from both ed2k and torrents is not very popular. Something about 0% probably.
@31 lamers suk
“To all you lamers out there that believe TPB doesn?t make any money, go back to the cool dark cave that you crawled out of. That whole trial was nothing but a bunch of lies and they should all go to jail for contempt of court. If you think all of those ads on TPB are just pretty site decoration and not for monitary gain, your an idiot.”
Wild speculation. Why don’t you prove it? The Pirate Bay website surely is not cheap to run.
Net Worth : $22.94 Million Last updated Today
Daily Pageview : 10476190
Daily Ads Revenue : $31431.22
I would post the link but these lamer mods delete it everytime.
http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.thepiratebay.o r g
The above addy without spaces in .org of course.
@34 lamers suk
Are you saying that websiteoutlook.com constitutes “proof”?
“It will be time to worry when we hear that MAFIAA actually forced some VPN service to reveal real IP(they didn’t manage to do this yet, did they?).”
Not as far as I’m aware and I believe if you go with a “p2p friendly” VPN this probably won’t ever happen.
“What I am worried about – trackers, they can be easily targeted. There are alternatives, like DHT, but as far as I can tell trackers are still best way to find the peers.”
Well, yes … but if your using VPN all traffic is routed through the tunnel, regardless of where it originates or what it is – so no need to worry about it.
Using VPN is probably the best way to stay anonymous whilst still keeping up good speeds.
Trackers list all peers with files described by any particular torrent, DHT works by exchanging hashes of torrents between arbitary (random that you happen to be connected to) clients so hence has a fairly low possiblity of finding other peers – ie trackers are much better at finding other peers.
Man I wish these punk anti-piracy morons would leave these fine folks alone.
RT
http://www.online-privacy.pro.tc
BREIN will get them…….
Go mininova @
Is there a way of finding torrents via the main search engines? YES. So why haven’t Google, Yahoo & the rest been lifted by the RIAA. Anyone?
EXACTLY, fookr. not to mention that google can be used to download mp3 files, if you know the proper search terms to put in. it’s not like mininova, the piratebay, isohunt, so on and so forth are doing anything differently. they’re just making it easier for people to get their hands on torrent files. this doesn’t mean that other sites, such as blog sites, cannot be used to host torrent files. ANY type of website can be used to host torrent files.
First there were laws passed to remove copyrighted content, now they’re trying to remove what may be copyrighted content, next it’ll be any content they don’t like.
If there’s going to be all these court cases at least make it compulsory to prove copyright on the material.
3 strikes and no internet coz some fuckwit’s pissed off with you will be no fun for anyone, just look at youtube when you add a tune to your video and they remove it without even considering fair use.
@#40
nobody messes with google, those who try get owned.
So if they lose and I hope not, does this mean that Google is also going to be forced to prefilter all it’s search results to match some government/industry filter list of what we are allowed to access online.
wow…did you guys get sucked in. This argument is just what the CORPORATES want to see. Them getting the P2P comunity to rip it’s self apart. I have my favorite site for torrents but it’s not TPB or MN. I don’t care if they make $ from ads or not. they have both got very good sites and I do visit them as well. The point is, WE ALL need to support the P2P sites and unite.
Stop the child like bickering and wake up to the fact that big lables and corporate greed must stop. They caused the beginning of P2P networks and are doing EVERYTHING they can to stop/control them.
I’m sure everyone has a good reason to be a member of their choise torrent site. I can respect this. I just wish you could all see the big picture. Corporate greed against the world.
They cry, they scream, they sue, they use dirty ways, and all for what?……just to rip more of your hard earned $ from yor hands.
They just want YOU to pay for their million $ bonus, limo’s and a way of life we could only dream of.
If they got the prices of their crap down to a reasonable price, and IF they did start to HELP the artists they scam, then piracy would drop to a small percent.
Get a grip people, and STOP being sucked in to fighting the wrong fight. We need to fight GREED,……NOT EACH OTHER.
Mininova Is the best ever torrent site
-WHO CARES and let google.com die also loool :PPPPPPP
Have fun using Yahoo!
Also seriously guys, you’re acting like you JUST found out there was MONEY in this piracy business!!11!!1oneone
What else did you thin those flashy ads were? And now you’re all OMG they make moeny?? I feel so DIRTY!!
Have fun spreading your torrents without Mininova or TPB…
Who cares if they’re making money? They’re providing a very valuable service. And uhm, let’s not forget – not everything on there is copyrighted guys. Not to mention that the supposed illegality of sharing copyrighted files is not firmly established in every nation of the world. Etc., etc.
Personally, if they are making money, I’m glad. It just spits in the face of the MAFIAA even more.
is this going to be another #spectrial like TPB trial?
Mininova even offers MAFIAA a option to remove the torrents but the industry still goes after them.
Oh well, another comedy act were we all can watch industry to make fools out of themselves, shuld be fun to watch
Also like i see all the MAFIAA paid trolls (sup NubCakes) are already here speculading things like they always do. When will you guys ever learn, you silly silly trolls -_-
if they are forced to track, then another tracker will come along to take their place. Besides, (Xenosaga’s Shion says this often LOL), the forums are actually just as good/better than the tracker. I learn so much by using it. MN rocks, one way or another. tEh p1r4c13s sh411 n0t b3 d3f34t3d, H011yw00D.
First torrents, what’s next usenet?
Said by #50 anon:
“MAFIAA paid trolls”
I prefer to call them MAFIAAtards.
Seriously, don’t you morons have anything more original to say, or is parroting MAFIAA propaganda all you are capable of doing?
Mininova is not obligated to filter torrent just like google. Hell everyone can find torrents using google even copyrighted images and movies without torrent.
Love you Mininova!! Keep fighting!
Why is everyone pissed that these sites are making money? Those ads give them the resources to fight these cases and give them a better shot to avoid being trampled by the anti-piracy groups. I hate ads as much as anybody, but if I have to get hit with a few ads so I can keep getting my music and movies, then I can deal with it. Good luck to Mininova.
thanks
tnx for all excellent
we love you dear !
wats the bloody use??share ur belongings with others,thats wat elders say:):):)so ppl v r with u,hail torrent sites
Fuck you guys. Mininova and iTunes Store is where I get my music.
Good luck Mininova. We are all with you.
-=:INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:=-
They do have a tracker btw:
http://tracker.prq.to/announce
I am a new user of Bittirent and Mininova and I just love it. I hope that the court rule in your favor
Gosh! I hope you guys win this case, you have helped me alot, thanks and good luck!!
There are some stupid comments on this thread, all of you use Mininova at some point and some sites are always going to be more popular than others so don’t wish their downfall…P2P is a type of communism its freedom of information sharing so don’t blab on about that either…P2P educates its users about the world though the spread of media legal or not, its essential to keep it alive! Keep the public awareness alive…killing piracy is never gonna happen it’s one of the most resilient and oldest of pastimes. But contribute…
> quote by “lamers suk”
>
>“To all you lamers out there that believe TPB doesn?t make any money, go back to the cool dark cave that you crawled out of. That whole trial was nothing but a bunch of lies and they should all go to jail for contempt of court. If you think all of those ads on TPB are just pretty site decoration and not for monitary gain, your an idiot.
>
> Net Worth : $22.94 Million Last updated Today
> Daily Pageview : 10476190
> Daily Ads Revenue : $31431.22
> http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.thepiratebay.o r g
I just ran that silly no-brainer estimator on my own site, and it outputted a twenty-fold higher value than what I actually get. I wouldn’t trust that figure AT ALL! It’s just a simple rigid constant multiplied by the number of pageviews.
Their ad revenue could, quite possibly, be all eaten up by their maintenance costs. However I doubt it, since offshore bank accounts seem to be involved. So I guess they probably earn about 1/20 of what was posted above, and then about half of that goes to maintenance, the rest to their treasury. That would land on $785 pure profit per day. Now divide by three people. Still quite profitable – about how much a regular job pays actually.
I hope they win. Ypu could always get them with invasion of privacy. I like the featured torrent place. I distribute my show there. Best of luck against the enemy.
If TPB wins their trial, Mininova should just move their operations to Sweden, less hassle and cheaper than to fight the legal battle.
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