Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that the system will be tested for 12 weeks with only a few titles. With this trial Mininova collaborates with an association representing several TV/movie content owners. Niek couldn’t tell us which one, but our best guess would be that it’s the MPA(A).

The content removal system should be seen as an extension of the existing copyright policy according to Niek, who also said that the current trial will be used to find out whether the content recognition system is a workable and effective solution.

The system was selected by the copyright holders themselves who want an easier way to get torrent files removed than the current notice and takedown policy, and it is operated by an undisclosed third party. Interestingly, this collaboration does not mean that the upcoming court case against BREIN is off the table.

Later this month BREIN 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. Up until now, Mininova refused to interfere with the search results, claiming that the DMCA take-down procedure they have is good enough. This has clearly changed now.

The response from Mininova’s users is mostly negative, with one commenter saying “Shame to see such a nice site decide to go hang itself,” and another adding “Wow, guess you guys are caving under the pressure. Too bad its all over now.”

The effectiveness of this filtering system, and how it will affect mininova’s popularity is yet to be seen, but it sure is a radical development.

Breaking story, more info will be added.

Source: Mininova Filters Copyright Infringing Torrents

According to a report, the Federal Opposition says it is “not surprised” that the government’s filtering scheme has been delayed. The latest update is that the trial will commence mid-January 2009, with the ISPs involved being announced at the same point.

iiNet, one of Australia’s largest ISPs, has been most vocal about the minimal chances of success for the filtering scheme, even going as far as to say that it was only participating in the trials to show that it will fail. iiNet chief Michael Malone even labeled the architect of the plan, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy, as “the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [Internet] industry has existed.”

An Australian Senate member since July 1993 and previously the Shadow Minister for Defense, Nick Minchin is the Shadow Minister for Broadband and he believes that the filtering system would drastically slow down the Internet.

He told ABC, “The laboratory trial that the Government conducted this year showed potential effect on speed of up to 87 per cent slowdown in the speed of the internet, he said, adding “And this is from the Government that wants to install a National Broadband Network so we can all have high speed broadband.”

“I think that’s a major flaw in the scheme but there are many, many others.”

So, three weeks from now the trial is supposed to start. It won’t take a fourth week to realize that it is doomed to fail.

Source: Australian Web and BitTorrent Filtering Scheme Delayed