Open Letter From TorrentFreak To Brein
Written by Ernesto on November 25, 2007The infamous anti-piracy watchdog BREIN infringed our copyright earlier this week as they used a quote from one of our articles without attribution. As a follow up to our previous article, we wrote an open letter to BREIN to educate the public about their lack of respect for the rights of people who don’t pay them millions.
Here’s what the MPAA has to say about what Brein did: “Piracy is the unauthorized taking, copying or use of copyrighted materials without permission. It is no different from stealing another person’s shoes or stereo, except sometimes it can be a lot more damaging.”
One of our counsels has put together an open letter to BREIN to show how hypocritical they are. They don’t care about copyright, they care about money and blame pirates for the inability of their clients to adapt their business models to technological change.
Letter:
—
Dear Mr Kuik
Being vociferous exponents of the fight against copyright infringement, your organization is expected to uphold the highest possible standards where the misuse of other people’s intellectual property is concerned.
It has been brought to my attention that your organization has reproduced text from an article published by this website concerning the website SumoTorrent, without prior written consent1 and without complying with the copyright terms applicable to this publication, TorrentFreak2.
Specifically, your organization has selectively and misleadingly quoted from our publication without properly attributing the source, in contravention of the Creative Commons license3 under which this text was published. This is a contemptible infringement of our own intellectual property rights, illustrative of a gross lack of professionalism on your part.
Furthermore, you have mischievously and inaccurately attributed the source of the material stolen from ourselves as being “a pirate weblog”. This amounts to actionable libel, inasmuch that neither the owners nor the staff of this publication – a well respected and widely read source of filesharing news - have ever been accused, suspected or prosecuted, for any so-called act of piracy. We are neither sailors nor thieves of other people’s intellectual property, unlike yourselves.
Your “news release” is peppered with inaccurate information, calculated to mislead and intimidate the millions of legitimate users of the many peer-to-peer filesharing services that are in common use throughout the world. Much of the material that is shared by sites targeted by yourselves such as SumoTorrent is open source, copyright has never been asserted or it is in the public domain. To presume otherwise is to add arrogance to the ignorance your organization has already exhibited.
There is, and there can never be, any legitimacy attached to your harassment5 of those who merely assist in finding the location of such copyright free material. The indiscriminate prevention of people’s enjoyment of their own property, in this case their own computers, is in direct contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights4.
Having learned that you have falsely claimed that a District Court judgment in June 2007 against a specific defendant amounted to some sort of precedent, justifying your demand that others breach data protection principles5 & 6, my expectations of your professionalism are not high.
Whilst I harbor no illusions that you will have the grace to apologize for your unwarranted breach of my own rights in these matters, this letter will serve to educate others and make public your abuse of process, your contempt for the rights of others and your outright hypocrisy.
Sincerely
TorrentFreak Counsel
legal@torrentfreak.com
—
References:
1: http://www.anti-piracy.nl/nieuws/bericht.asp?nieuwsberichtid=98
2: http://torrentfreak.com/brein-pirates-torrentfreak-071119/
3: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights
Article 1: Obligation to respect Human Rights
Article 7: No punishment without law
Protocol 1: Rights to enjoyment of property
5: Letter from LeaseWeb describing illegal pressure from BREIN
6: EC Directive 95/46
End
We never seriously considered taking any legal action, we were simply mirroring the behavior of these anti-piracy organizations. The main difference is that we aren’t malicious and we pride ourselves on never threatening people.
Previously: The Pirate Bay Cancels OiNK Replacement
Next: QuebecTorrent Lawsuit: Backdoor to Banning All Canadian BitTorrent Sites?
132 Responses
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They don’t care now that you’ve admitted you’re not suing them. Way to screw the pooch. They’re not some lost kid who sees a good deed and then they’ll change in the end like Scrooge you idiots.
This is ridicolous. Sorry. This letter is hypocrite.
Loud noises! Intellectual property rights! Trach stab jobs!
Oh, can I stop yelling now above all the voices?
Great letter. I enjoyed a piece of literature that sticks it to the man any day of the week….that’s what she said.
breiiinnnssssss !!!!
The people at TorrentFreak would truly only be considered hypocrites if they took legal action. What they are trying to do in this situation is to show people how trivial taking legal action really is. Just because they wrote a letter to some anti-piracy dudes does NOT mean they are hypocrites. Think about it.
[quote comment="223713"]The people at TorrentFreak would truly only be considered hypocrites if they took legal action. What they are trying to do in this situation is to show people how trivial taking legal action really is. Just because they wrote a letter to some anti-piracy dudes does NOT mean they are hypocrites. Think about it.[/quote]
Agreed.
Why dont u demanded take down? :D
BREIN will never “learn”, because it’s their job to be assholes. They are contracted by various organizations to do the dirty work.
Expecting BREIN to stop unjustly harassing P2P sites, is about as implausible as expecting the US Government to admit the war on Iraq/Iran was a fabrication. The truth is irrelevant if it gets in the way of the almighty buck. Money wins, every time.
I foresee this article in the digg top 10
BREIN staff should use this as a suicide note.
you should take their money lol
wow…vociferous! Im sure they are just laughing as they probably cant see the irony in what they did…words are wasted on greed!
i really hope they respond, lol…
and you post the response :OX
who cares. the scene hates you anyway TF
Kudos…
sue the faggots for a couple hundred thousand dollars
Awesome stuff!
“a pirate weblog” - actually, I find that you fit the title aptly. Even though one may not self-associate with a particular title, that doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate. It is.
And … are you gonna deliver this letter the “Kuik”-way and hand it over to him in person like he visited some “victims” ?
Otherwise i love to do that !
PWN! That was ridiculously well written. I wish I was half as talented as all of the writters at torrentfreak. Good work!
Even though it is usually a reliable source, I wouldn’t source Wikipedia because anyone could edit it, including them, and therefore untrustworthy.
I think it’s absolutely beautiful! Good thinking, guys.
They are attacking you with STEALING property and all you can come back with is a mere attack on a quote that was used without written consent! Are you kidding me? Do you really think that this letter will do anything but be a joke at their office? Downloading music is a crime and you are offering the chance for people to download music, therefore, you are part of the problem. Artist’s work hard to produce their pieces and them some punk teenager or middle-aged ass living in his parents basement steals from them. I bet if you made a deal with them, they would stop harrassing you. Everytime someone downloads an album, or collection thereof, from your site, a guy will come to your door and punch you in the face. Does that sound reasonable?
Regardless of the legality of your claims, it is well written - at the beginning. The second half of the letter comes off as sarcastic. That impacts your credibility.
[quote comment="223713"]The people at TorrentFreak would truly only be considered hypocrites if they took legal action.[/quote]
But they wouldn’t be hypocritical for posting the entire passage written by BREIN that contains a single sentence from the TF interview?
To scream rather loudly about copyright infringement over a very small quote while quoting a larger piece of text from the accused is a fairly clear case of hypocrisy.
[quote comment="223806"]PWN! That was ridiculously well written. I wish I was half as talented as all of the writters at torrentfreak. Good work![/quote]
Maybe it was well written for a layman, but from a lawyer I would expect better.
The letter was not written by any of the regular TF writers, they’re too busy paying lawyers to read wikipedia and throw insults at other lawyers :-P
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