BREIN won the case and the founders were ordered to block Dutch users, a decision they chose to appeal. The trio denied current connections to the site but the Court rejected this defense as the defendants could not name the current owners or provide any documents proving that the site was sold to Seychelles-based company Reservella.

Last month the earlier ruling was confirmed in a full trial at the Amsterdam Court, a hearing none of the founders attended.

The Court ruled that Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter will now have to pay penalties of 50,000 euros per day for non-compliance. However no action has yet been taken by the site to block Dutch users.

Perhaps concerned that the founders aren’t aware of the Dutch ruling, today BREIN boss Tim Kuik embarked on a remarkable mission.

As we reported earlier, the Green Party hosted a panel discussion titled “Art in the Digital Age” in Vienna, Austria, this week. One of the invited panel guests was Werner Müller, boss of the Austrian film and music industry trade association. Müller withdrew his participation after he discovered that Peter Sunde was going to be there.

Tim Kuik, however, saw pinning down Sunde’s location as a golden opportunity.

“Just explained new Dutch verdict to Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde in Vienna and handed him a copy of it: stop or pay 50K a day,” said Kuik tonight.

In order to document the event, Kuik also had their meeting filmed and recorded.

In a statement BREIN said that Sunde “was spotted on a terrace near the open air debate venue”. There he was approached by Kuik who explained the Amsterdam Court’s ruling and gave him a copy.

“He is aware of the verdict now”, says Kuik, “so the terms are running, he has to show up or pay up.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In a recent interview Tim Kuik told the readers of a Dutch magazine that he is the proud owner of a Sony VAIO laptop. “It was once confiscated from a hacker,” Kuik added, noting that he couldn’t give out any more info because of the type of people his organization deals with.

This confession of the Dutch anti-piracy boss raises some interesting questions. Although BREIN often assists the police in raids and investigations, they are nothing more than a private non-profit organization and hold no law enforcement powers.

Even if they did, using a confiscated computer for personal use might break a few laws. So how did Tim get his laptop? Did he steal it?

We can only guess, but there are plenty of examples where similar anti-piracy outfits gain access to goods that were initially seized by the police. In the UK cases of TV-Links and FileSoup, the private anti-piracy group FACT was placed in charge of the seized property instead of the police.

Similarly, in the United States the RIAA often plays the role of law enforcer instead of sticking to their lobbyist position. They even employ ‘investigators’ who work on cases together with the police. Can we really allow these biased groups to influence the work of real law enforcers?

These developments are worrisome to say the least. The line between law enforcement and the anti-piracy lobby is getting more and more blurred. The police are raiding houses of people based on misleading information from anti-piracy outfits, and as a reward they seemingly gain control over confiscated goods.

Back to the confiscated Sony VAIO. Tim Kuik has effectively stolen the machine if he indeed got ‘his’ laptop from a raid BREIN was involved with. And by stealing we don’t mean that he made a copy like most pirates do. So who’s going to tip off the police now?

Update: Tim Kuik told TorrentFreak in a response that he acquired the laptop legitimately. The laptop was given to him by one of the parties involved in the case who received it as compensation. We have the verdict, but it doesn’t mention the laptop.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

For now the verdict has been put on hold by BREIN, allowing the three defendants to appeal. Nevertheless, because of the legal issues between the two parties, an encounter between the head of BREIN, Tim Kuik and Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm that took place at Hacking at Random (HAR) this Friday was a rather interesting one.

Tim Kuik participated in a panel discussion on copyright laws and the future of media distribution at HAR, and halfway through he was standing face to face with Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay. Svartholm, who had been following the discussion in the audience, took the opportunity to confront Kuik with some of the allegations he made.

Svartholm started by asking if BREIN actually has any evidence that The Pirate Bay is making ‘a lot’ of money from distributing copyrighted works, as they claim. “Can you please tell me where that profit is, because i’d like some of it,” he asked, which resulted in applause and cheers from the audience.

“You tell me, you’re here, somebody paid for your trip,” Kuik quickly replied in an attempt to turn things around, implying that Svartholm must have used Pirate Bay revenue to make his way over to The Netherlands.

Svartholm, who currently works as a software programmer in Asia where he earns his living, then replied, “I paid for this trip by developing computer software for my customers,” which was again followed by applause from the audience.

Kuik found his argument crushed so reverted back to the earlier question about profits. “Everybody knows, including yourself, that you’re selling advertising space on your website, and people pay you for that,” he said.

Kuik went on to say that a Swedish investigative journalist found that The Pirate Bay made hundreds of thousands of kroner every year. To some this may sound like an impressive figure, but 300,000 kroner ($40,000) may not even be enough to cover the hardware and bandwidth costs, so it doesn’t prove that there’s any profit.

From Kuik’s responses it seems that BREIN has no evidence at all that The Pirate Bay is as profitable as they claim it is, so Svartholm went on to ask Kuik about the defamation lawsuit that the former Pirate Bay founders started against him and his organization.

The head of BREIN is being sued by TPB in Sweden for defamation, after Kuik claimed that the Pirate Bay founders were responsible for an alleged DDoS attack on BREIN’s website. In Sweden, Kuik is now facing up to two years in prison, and Svartholm wanted to know if he plans to show up.

In his reply, Kuik denied that he ever attributed the DDoS attacks to the people behind the Pirate Bay, but he said that it was a coincidence that their website was hit right after the case against TPB was announced to the press. Svartholm of course questioned Kuik’s denial, but he never saw his original question answered.

In the end, Kuik never answered any of the questions posed by Svartholm, but the face to face standoff between two people at the extreme ends of the copyright debate was an interesting one nonetheless. After the panel discussion, Tim Kuik and Gottfrid Svartholm set their differences aside for a brief moment, as they posed for the cameras.

The video of the HAR panel discussion is available in OGG and on Vimeo (Gottfrid at 30:20).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Interestingly, the news came as a total surprise to Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter who say they received no official summons and were not aware of the case until they were notified by a journalist – after it was heard in court. In a counter move, the three have today sent a letter to the Amsterdam court, asking it to dismiss the case and impose damages against BREIN.

“We would like the Dutch court to [...] make sure that these power hungry corporations and organizations can not abuse their power and financial muscles against private people that criticize the way these companies behave towards the public. It is not acceptable behavior and we urge the court to put an end to their madness,” they write in a letter to the Amsterdam court.

In addition, Tim Kuik, the head of BREIN is now being sued by the three in Sweden for slander, libel and defamation, after Kuik claimed that the Pirate Bay founders were responsible for an alleged DDoS attack on BREIN’s website. In Sweden, Kuik is now facing up to two years in prison, high damages and fines.

“I am sure there will be no other outcome for this except that Mr. Kuik will have to make an apology and also pay fines for his crimes,” Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde said in a comment.

In their letter Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij explain in detail why they think the case should be dismissed. “We’re very certain the court will have to throw the case out the window,” Gottfrid Svartholm said.

Fredrik Neij added: “None of us live in The Netherlands, operate from there or even own the site they are suing over. There are so many errors in this lawsuit that it’s almost a crime to spend the court’s time this way!”

Indeed, apart from the fact that the three were summoned through Twitter and Facebook where they get hundreds of messages a day, none of them is actually the owner of the site itself. “The owners are a company called RESERVELLA, not anyone of those mentioned in the lawsuit,” they informed the court.

The Pirate Bay founders and spokesman will now await the response from the Amsterdam court, and BREIN frontman Tim Kuik can look forward to a letter from the Swedish court inviting him to make a trip to the home of The Pirate Bay.

If the Dutch court decides to award damages to The Pirate Bay, they founders say they want the money to go to the Dutch Pirate Party. “Since the need of this organization is made obvious by a case like this,” they informed the Court.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Between 50 and 65 percent of all download traffic is P2P related.
Between 75 and 90 percent of all upload traffic is P2P related.

And it seems that more people are using p2p today

In 2004 1 CacheLogic-server registered 3 million IP-addresses in 30 days
In 2006 1 CacheLogic-server registered 3 million IP-addresses in 8 days

So what do people download?

61,4 percent video
11,3 percent audio
27,2 percent is games/software/etc.

The average filesize of shared files is 1 gigabyte

thx r-win
Cachelogic

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.