The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN claims to have taken down 75 BitTorrent trackers today. Although most of the sites were relatively small and private communities, together they had more than half a million registered users. This is the first time that so many sites have been taken offline at once.
RARBG, probably one of the biggest BitTorrent trackers you’ve never heard of, has been ordered to close by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The 100,000 member site, which is particularly popular with Bulgarians, doesn’t intend to comply but simply move to a different host, outside of BREIN’s jurisdiction.
Leaseweb, the former ISP of BitTorrent trackers such as Demonoid, What.cd and Waffles.fm lost the appeal against the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The Amsterdam court concluded that Leaseweb has to permanently shut down the BitTorrent tracker everlasting.nu, and hand over the admin’s personal information.
In an attempt to cut down on so-called “illegal downloading” in the UK, the anti-piracy outfit BPI has sent out a round of intimidating emails, based on faulty evidence. BREIN plans to follow this example in The Netherlands, and meanwhile, the French Minister of culture is encouraging all EU member states to do the same.
According to an ever increasing wave of emails to TorrentFreak, it appears that residents of at least two countries can no longer access Demonoid. Not only are users from the Netherlands complaining they cannot access the site but now it’s the turn of Brazilian BitTorrent fans to wonder why they’ve been cut off.
One 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.
No 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.
Having failed to encourage massive punishment against the administrator of eDonkey link site ‘ShareConnector’ in a criminal trial, anti-piracy outfit BREIN has once more resorted to traditional bully tactics – by turning up on his doorstep and threatening him, face to face.
Hosting a BitTorrent tracker at Leaseweb in the Netherlands has been considered by some to be a great option, offering value for money and good service. However, if you asked the administrators of Araditracker, BitHQ and PeerPortal what they think of this host, don’t expect a positive answer – Leaseweb has just given their personal details to the anti-piracy police, BREIN.
The first rule of Usenet is, you don’t talk about Usenet. This rule kept Usenet providers and users out of sight from anti-piracy organizations for years, but this is about to change.
The Dutch anti-piracy organization Brein is suing the web hosting provider of the BitTorrent site extremepowertorrents.nl because they hosted the site, which is illegal according to Brein. Brein is demanding over $350,000 to cover the loss in expenses.
