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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Ja, maar wacht even, het is natuurlijk wel waar wat BREIN zegt.
[quote comment="224215"]Ja, maar wacht even, het is natuurlijk wel waar wat BREIN zegt.[/quote]
Sorry I don’t understand German. Can anyone please translate this? Thanks.
Don’t think that’s German.
[quote comment="224215"]Ja, maar wacht even, het is natuurlijk wel waar wat BREIN zegt.[/quote]
I think it’s Ochbloggish
Ja, maar wacht even, het is natuurlijk wel waar wat BREIN zegt.
=
“yes, but hold on, it is ofcourse true what Brein is saying.”
gahhh can’t wait to see what their response is.
I’m surprised nobody has said the word “plagarism” here by now, because that’s what it boils down to… and I’d think in the EU, there’d be far more legal precedent to nail them on plagarism, than on piracy.
All the same, this is a good way to wake Brein up to just how insane they truly are.
@92: there is no speedlimit in germany. so no car in the world is too fast.
If u interesting in downloading by torrent client and u looking for good invite from good web site go through this link http://tracker-invites.org/index.php?referredby=2546 and make registry and have invite and trade invite also good luck
[quote comment="224063"]Congratulations, you are #1 stupid on the Internet![/quote]Yet you will end up on the losing side here. Wonder why.
[quote comment="224278"]Ja, maar wacht even, het is natuurlijk wel waar wat BREIN zegt.
=
“yes, but hold on, it is ofcourse true what Brein is saying.”[/quote]
Thank you Jack B.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, great job. Unlike some open letters, we KNOW this one will get read by those it is addressed to. Because we know they read your site. Let’s just hope they don’t misquote it out of context.
Gets you thinking, what do these guys do for fun…? In a world where its technically illegal to watch a DVD you borrowed from a friend, I should think legal entertainment is hard to come by. Weirdos.
[quote comment="223455"]They will never answer this letter :D
They are too stupid to understand it’s contents.[/quote]
BAHAHAHAAAA
jixx, there are speed limits in Germany.
it would be more fun if you sued :P
[quote comment="223663"]“There is, and there can never be, any legitimacy attached to your harassment.”
Lot of praise for a letter with such an obvious mistake.[/quote]
Yeah, I was kind of hoping that this typo somehow made it on here, but wasn’t in the letter they sent. But, I also somehow find that to be unlikely. Too bad.
Also, as has been pointed out, Wikipedia isn’t exactly a citation begging to be taken seriously in a legal context.
Nonetheless, I like the spirit of the letter.
I can’t believe alot of people can’t understand a joke or some sort of “sarcasm” :D
For the record, I still support suing them
LOL just can’t stop
Spread the word!
If u interesting in downloading by torrent client and u looking for good invite from good web site go through this link http://tracker-invites.org/index.php?referredby=2546 and make registry and have invite and trade invite also good luck
Lame, TF. You have a poor understanding of copyright law and I’m sure your bluff has done nothing to scare the MPAA.
Delicious ironies here. The letter is a brilliantly worded parody of the kind of letters sent out by anti-piracy organisations such as BREIN, yet (some) of the responses are a brilliant parody of the intellectually retarded 13 year old itellectual maggots that have destroyed Slyck, P2PNet and made Zeropaid such an unpleasant place to be.
Great letter, superb delivery and very tongue in cheek. 10/10
LOL Surely you can’t expect some of these armchair critics who have done nothing in their lives except criticise everyone else to understand irony?
Superb letter, proves that not everyone who supports piracy is an illiterate.
Did someone already mention BREIN is the dutch anti piracy organisation? BREIN means brain in dutch……
Definitely ironical.
I am sitting here with red cheeks of shame.
Thank you torrentfreak for your elaborate actions. I think this is an intellectual approach of problems and that is the best approach. ^^
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