BitTorrent Sites Safe Haven Under Threat
Written by Ernesto on June 23, 2007Leaseweb, the ISP of some of the largest BitTorrent sites like Torrentspy, BTjunkie and Demonoid was forced to take down everlasting.nu, a relatively small BitTorrent site. The outcome of the lawsuit initiated by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit Brein could spell trouble for some of the key players in the BitTorrent landscape.
In response to this decision (Dutch link) several BitTorrent admins, who prefer not to be named, already announced that they have plans to leave Leaseweb. Others are setting up backup locations in case their site s are targeted. An admin of one of the bigger BitTorrent sites said:
“It looks like we’re not going to be very safe anymore on Leaseweb, we are putting backups in place on another location, just in case.”
This Thursday, the Amsterdam court concluded that everlasting.nu structurally facilitated copyright infringement by allowing their users to download copyrighted content via torrents hosted on their site.
Leaseweb’s lawyers argued that there was no evidence that these torrents really pointed to copyrighted works. They referred to the fact that rights holders often upload fake files themselves and that the name of a .torrent file is not sufficient to prove that copyrighted works are being distributed. Brein responded to this argument by stating that everlasting.nu then would be a very customer unfriendly BitTorrent site if this was the case, and the judge agreed with this.
At the end of the hearing the court decided that Leaseweb has to take down everlasting.nu and hand over the name and address of the owner. Additionally, Leaseweb is obliged to take down everlasting.nu, in case the site returns in the near future.
It still remains unclear what made the judge decide that everlasting is facilitating copyright infringement and how this will affect the position of all the other BitTorrent sites hosted by Leaseweb. The fact that everlasting has their own BitTorrent tracker was not used as an argument in the decision. So does this mean that hosting .torrent files is illegal now?
Brein sure thinks so, they already announced another lawsuit against Leaseweb to take down another BitTorrent site. At this point it is not sure whether this is one of the big players like Torrentspy, BTjunkie and Demonoid, or yet again a smaller BitTorrent site.
To be continued.
Previously: Mac OS X Leopard Leaked to BitTorrent
Next: FlixFlux: BitTorrent Site Includes Movie Trailers
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I hate to say I told you so but…
I told you so! It’s time to relocate people. If you want to stay close to home, invest in co-location in Sweden. Don’t care about colo? Malaysia.istheshit.net.
Sweden won’t stay a heaven for a long time, do you guys really think that the provocative attitude of ThePirateBay will remain unpunished ?
What about ThePirateBay sponsoring other trackers and hosting them in exchange for ads?
Run, run and run some more… I love my demons. Better than gettin nailed by BREIN.
“Brein responded to this argument by stating that everlasting.nu then would be a very customer unfriendly BitTorrent site if this was the case, and the judge agreed with this.”
Now would BREIN’s argument in return not mean that a site, where those fakes are common, can be hosted safely in the netherlands?
from the link
“De bestanden worden aan de gebruikers van Everlasting aangeboden en uitgewisseld door middel van het zogenaamde BitTorrent-systeem. Dit houdt onder meer in dat een bestand in stukjes vanaf meerdere computers tegelijk kan worden gedownload en dat die stukjes direct weer geupload worden bij andere gebruikers. Het BitTorrent-systeem van Everlasting bestaat uit twee onderdelen, te weten de website zelf waarop de bestanden worden aangeboden en de onderliggende ‘Tracker’ die het up- en download verkeer regelt. Beide onderdelen bevinden zich op de server bij Leaseweb;”
my bad dutch knowldge reads here that the judge was under the impression that the copyrighted content (”bestanden”) is hosted on that leaseweb server from everlasting.nu. Some native dutch speaker can clarify please?
[quote comment="121726"]
my bad dutch knowldge reads here that the judge was under the impression that the copyrighted content (”bestanden”) is hosted on that leaseweb server from everlasting.nu. Some native dutch speaker can clarify please?[/quote]
This is pretty confusing indeed. “bestanden” translates to “files”. In this paragraph they make it look like the copyrighted content is stored on their servers. They say that the “files” are hosted on everlasting, I’m not sure whether they refer to .torrent files or the actual infringing content..
It is not clear to me whether the judge understands the difference between the copyrighted files and the .torrent files.
so change the file extension to something else instead of .torrent
make it .tnerrot.
the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.
[quote comment="121788"]so change the file extension to something else instead of .torrent
make it .tnerrot.
the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.[/quote]
i agree.
some sites already stop putting the .torrent and its not that hard to add it yourself so this is the best way for time being
the irony in my eyes from this story is that Amsterdam, home of legalized Pot is bitching because of a .torrent… whats next… they gonna make pot illegal too?!? That would crush so many peoples hearts. But hey look at like this… in about 4 months I’ll be pressing my luck and attempt to host BitTorrent Sites here in Portugal. After all… The Portuguese are the Original founders/owners of the world and we don’t believe in the Courts as much as the rest of the world.
Red Wine anyone?
I’m Dutch myself, and as usual, BREIN makes bullshit claims. The lawyer accepted the ‘fact’ that this website was sharing the content. Again, as usual, the lawyer doesn’t understand a pee about computing/torrenting. I hate BREIN :@
P.S.: The Dutch word BREIN means brains.
BREIN has got no brains ^.-
To be honest the answer is pretty simple.
Buy up servers in areas where there are no real laws against copyright.
Sure it may mean third world countries with bugger all infrastructure, but it also means complete privacy and copyright free goodness.
“Brein” is the Dutch word for “asshole”
[quote comment="121788"]make it .tnerrot. the it would take another couple of years before that extension became illegal.[/quote]
How about .brein or .{judge-name-here} or .riaa-authorized or .valenti in his honor?
[quote comment="122647"]To be honest the answer is pretty simple.
Buy up servers in areas where there are no real laws against copyright.
Sure it may mean third world countries with bugger all infrastructure, but it also means complete privacy and copyright free goodness.[/quote]
It means too that the MPAA and RIAA can do what they want. Don’t even start about the agencies of the US that mix into it. They can do what they want to.
I believe the only save havens you’ll find regarding such ordeals will be in countries like Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, where piracy is already rampant and I doubt anyone could do anything against it. If people were to come here and retrieve, for example, all the pirated Windows they’d most likely take 90% of the home based computers. I don’t think they’ll be able to do that, and if even so imaginable, it’ll most likely be in a very very long time. Also, torrents aren’t so popular in said places so litigation would be much more difficult against the filsharing scene, at least regarding .torrents.
Demonoid is down today. Anyone know if this is related?
#19 i see that too! i found this page by googling to find out why demonoid is down. i had so many friends on those forums =[ but the guys at demonoid are smart and they’ve already had to switch hosts multiple times so im guessing they’ll be back with their backups. whats confusing is that google is still picking up .torrent files and recent forum posts by usernames ??? =\ =’(
Good, So it’s not just me. I always get paranoid my ISP is up to something. The wierd thing is I’m dling a low seed/leech torrent and it’s still connecting to the tracker. Must be a DNS resolution issue.
damn this sucks im with demonoid and all other torrents the whole way.
i hope for everything that they have a large amount of backups.
i hope that demonoid being down is only a temporary thing….cause I’m a “donor” or whatever(they take out $5 each month and my ratio never falls below 1) and they charged my card again today….
Something is there at http://www.demonoid.com and it’s answering pings. Whatever is there is refusing http connects. “Best case” scenario: Maybe they got hacked and are restoring from backups? “Worst case”: Well, given the timing of this article they got taken down and are setting up a new home?
They do have an IRC channel, conveniently listed on the site :-) Anyone know it?
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