SceneAccess and NFOrce Under Pressure from BREIN
Written by enigmax on May 21, 2008One of the most exclusive private torrent trackers, SceneAccess, has found itself hounded out of the Netherlands by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The site was hosted by NFOrce who handed over the owners details to BREIN who discovered them to be false. Worryingly, there are many other torrent sites hosted at NFOrce.
Anyone with an interest in BitTorrent sites will tell you that many of them are hosted in the Netherlands, due to what is perceived by many as a legal gray area. Dozens of sites inhabit the servers at hosts such as LeaseWeb, despite a few being kicked out or forced to move to other countries in recent months.
Known by most for its scene ‘warez’ release database hosted at NFOrce.NL, another major torrent site host is NFOrce, which gained mainstream notoriety after the OiNK tracker was busted while being hosted by the company. Now it seems that anti-piracy outfit BREIN - who received press this week for their announced legal action against BitTorrent giant mininova - has NFOrce and sites hosted there, firmly in its spotlight.
A few weeks ago NFOrce was approached by BREIN, who demanded the host to shut down SceneAccess (SCC) and hand over the identity of the site administrator. Initially, NFOrce did not respond to these demands, so in response, BREIN filed a preliminary injunction. A few days before this announcement SceneAccess mysteriously went down, with NFOrce claiming this was unrelated to BREIN.
Despite the fact that SceneAccess had moved to a new host outside The Netherlands, BREIN did not back off, and still demanded the customer information. Now, just days before the court hearing, NFOrce handed over the name and address information for the owner of SceneAccess which, luckily for them, turned out to be false.
The court case scheduled for today has now been canceled. BREIN claims that they are still owed costs relating to the case, but nonetheless, they are happy that their tactics of host-threatening are working, as other sites - and there are many of them - are said to be leaving NFOrce.
BREIN director Tim Kuik says that they don’t want hosts such as NFOrce “to be a safe haven for sites and servers that illegally offer movies, music, games and other interactive software”, whilst omitting to mention that BitTorrent sites host no infringing material. Going on to expand on the scope of operations, Kuik says: “These include bittorrent sites, edonkey, ftp servers and servers that carry out illegal activities. It is not the technology [at fault] but what those sites and servers do with that technology. If that is unlawful or invasive than we take action. The hosting provider will be asked to take the site or server offline, and tell us who their customer is.”
BREIN would like to hold hosts liable for on-going damages if they keep torrent sites running when it becomes clear they are in possession of false contact details. NFOrce was encouraged to find additional information which would help in tracking down the owner of SceneAccess and hand it to BREIN, which it did. This information is still being checked, but will likely lead BREIN into another dead end, especially if the tone of the SceneAccess owner is taken into consideration:
“Well as some of you already know, BREIN threatened our host (NFOrce), and we had to move. We are currently on a temporary server, we will move to a new server (in a safe location) in the next few days. There’s nothing to worry about, our database server wasn’t on NFOrce, and we securely deleted (38 passes) all files from nforce before we left. We might have some downtime at some point (because of the move from the temp server to the new server) but keep seeding because, we are not going anywhere”
After the initial panic and worry of pending legal action, champagne bottles will probably be metaphorically cracked open but sadly for them, BREIN won’t be getting drunk, at least not in celebration. SceneAccess is no longer hosted in the Netherlands, so BREIN can be congratulated for changing the location of the server, but without affecting the operational capability of the site - or identifying the owner.
Previously: WikiSubtitles Taken Down By Spanish Anti-Piracy Outfit
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60 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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brein is sucks fucking cock
NFOrce seem like they will sell out whoever they need to stay afloat.
Didn’t we see this same sort of behaviour from them with OiNK?
Tim Kuik must be bulled a lot as a child, what a sad, sad man.
BREIN. Liek use your brain.
bullied* Where’s the edit button when you need it?
*beats BREIN to death with the Stick of Futility +2*
@2 (worried about nforce)
In the case of OiNK, I think if the police come knocking you have to comply. I don’t think NFOrce had a choice.
It’s my understanding that if an admin doesn’t provide his real details, there is no problem if the host hands them over to anyone.
Why did Pieter not wait for a order from the RC ( Rechter Commisaris ) before handing out the confidential details ?!
the cat and mouse game continues
SCC has good pre-times but few peers, pretty hard to maintain a decent ratio if ur using ur Home connetion.
Nyways as far as BREIN is concerned…well they just need a good lawsuit & a straight thinking judge to set em in Place.
Well it was lsightly more private before this article, epic fail again
Well it was slightly more private before this article, epic fail again
SCC is one of the best sites for content. There Administrative team seem really on the ball with the way the Site is operated.
@Waldo, You’re a prime example of the worse case scenario when adults don’t use birth control when they should have. Really astounds me that of 100,000+ sperm you were the fastest.
Back on topic, someone should knock BREIN’s fu#king brains out with a baseball bat… and if they keep at this, someone most probably will.
Heres hoping…
Cheers!
http://www.ezee.se/
LoL BREIN, you are Fucked Up again :)
I am sure Mininova will fuck you too LoL ! ! ! !
We like to see you dying like IFPI :)
Go on A-Hole :)
Seriously, why doesn’t someone just hack these stupid organizations and cause them the annoyance they cause us?! Put a warez or torrent site up in place of there address, would be funny to see.
Hacking BREIN would accomplish little. They’d just put their site back up. What we really need to do is cut off their funding. Just stop buying cds and movies from big labels. That’s the answer. The more people do this, the stronger we are.
@ Norm
Not buying anything from them big labels is not easy to achieve.
I don’t know, it might sound infantile but why not fight fire with fire as “whocares” is saying? Seriously, do you think they give a damn about all the troubles you may experience if you get busted? Greedy people are heartless, think about it ….
I miss awesomely great news…
prq.se now with swedish hosts !!!!!
If i were them i think i would have gone a little further then that
@ Post 25
- Agree with point 1
- Disagree with point 2, that’s a little too extreme ;)
To whoever said ‘lets not buy from the big labels’ half the other labels are either owned by the majors or distributed by them.
I thought scenetorrents was one of these sites that didnt let people use their name so a bunch of morons cant talk about them and try to join them.
We have to do something more effective. Selective buying is not very effective when there are few people. We have to politically campaign against them. Politics lies at the heart of it. Ignore politics and you will ignore everything important about it. We cannot attack these greedy people directly. Let us unite against them as a group, pool our resources together, and bid people join us. Only then can we ever effect change.
Firstly, rallies and street marches/parades are important to rally people to the cause.
Secondly, we need to create our own culture. Let us see what creative culture we can create as we take things from culture, and give it our own spin, in violation of copyright. It shall serve both as inspiration and protest.
Third, we need to campaign to get the media to be less favorable to those greedy people and more favorable to the people who stand for liberty and culture.
@12: i think the anti-piracy ppl are well aware of the site, hence the article rofl
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