A court in The Netherlands has banned a Usenet community from publishing the names of files which allegedly infringe copyright. According to the judges who handled the case, Dutch site FTD – who weren’t even present at the hearing – must stop publishing the names and Usenet locations of files connected to a particular movie or face penalties of 10,000 euros per day.
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. Ironically, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN are now the first ones trying to enforce this rule in court.
Earlier this year, anti-piracy outfit BREIN demanded the closure of Usenet community FTD. After negotiations between the pair came to nothing, BREIN declared FTD a criminal operation prompting FTD to take legal action against BREIN to clear their name. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD, demanding $70,000 a day in penalties.
It is very common indeed for anti-piracy groups to go after sites linked to file-sharing. However, in The Netherlands the tables have recently been turned as the FTD Usenet community is taking legal action against anti-piracy group BREIN. TorrentFreak spoke with FTD’s lawyer to discover exactly why this worm has turned.
A Usenet discussion community is taking notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN to court. BREIN, which has taken action against many Usenet and BitTorrent sites including Demonoid and Mininova, has declared the activities of FTD illegal. Angered by these claims, FTD is now taking BREIN to court to force it to eat its words.
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