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Usenet Community Banned From Publishing Filenames

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.

A curious case has just been heard in The Netherlands which has led a court to arrive to a rather surprising decision.

It began when Dutch movie studio Eyeworks applied for a court injunction to stop Usenet community FTD from “making available to the public” their movie Komt een vrouw bij de dokter (A Woman At The Doctor).

One might think that there is nothing particularly surprising about this event, after all this kind of thing is happening more often lately. But FTD isn’t hosting or storing the movie, and it isn’t offering torrents or NZB files either.

What FTD is doing, however, is allowing its users to post the filenames and the locations of those files which already exist on Usenet. Eyeworks argued that by publishing this information, FTD was making the movie available to the public.

The case was just heard at a court in The Hague. The judges agreed with Eyeworks and issued an injunction which forbids FTD from publishing filename and file location information concerning the above-mentioned movie.

“This [decision has been made] despite consistent case law (e.g. from Mininova and The Pirate Bay) that says that posting hyperlinks, torrents etc is *not* an infringement of copyright,” FTD lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak.

“That kind of activity can be called ‘assisting to make available’ but under Dutch law (different in the USA and probably the UK) that is only a tort. A tort is very much different from a copyright infringement,” he added.

The case was heard without FTD being in the court to defend themselves.

“The procedure used is called an ‘ex parte injunction’, which indeed can be issued without involvement of the accused party,” Engelfriet explains. “This procedure was introduced through European Directive 2004/48/EG.”

The punishment for failing to comply with the injunction is a fine of 10,000 euros per day. Next Wednesday FTD will file an objection against the decision.

“FTD is challenging the provisional measure because it is clear that it should not have been issued under Dutch law,” Engelfriet concludes.

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  • KrisSams

    Whats usenet?

  • KrisSams

    Sounds like a shitty movie anyways.

  • Anonymous
  • Random

    Firstly. Wow sad story..

  • lolwow

    @#1

    this is the average TF reader

    gb2yourpubtrackerplz

  • Tyler Durden

    The first rule of copyrighted content is that you do not talk about copyrighted content.
    The second rule of copyrighted content is that you DO NOT talk about copyrighted content.

  • Anonymous
  • Matches Malone

    Great intellectual discussion going on here. Does it bother anyone that this strengthens laws that should never have been written in the first place? Just me? Ok, I now return you to your regularly scheduled intellectual diatribe….

  • Lucky Man

    @7 i agreed, same here. I will take lot of stuff from RIAA n retarted groups too. I will keep downloading lot of stuff from them as long as they react.

  • lol

    @1 usenet is one of the best places to get files from. More than likely this will get over turned when they appeal because they will be present and be able to prove any points they have. Where as this was just the plaintiffs voicing their side of the story.

  • Cygnus

    What Usenet users need is a site that links to a site, that links to a site, that links to a site….

    you see where i’m going with this?

  • anonymous

    why not turn up at this hearing and dispute the accusations? must be better than having to appeal. plus the difference between the info showing on this site and a search engine result is?

  • Oehoeboeroe

    @ anonymous (12)

    The point is that at an “ex parte injunction” the other party isn’t informed about the procedure until the verdict is done.

  • IR

    Read about the directive:

    “…the directive provides that a patentee may now approach the court, presenting “reasonably available evidence sufficient to support its claim” and specifying “evidence which lies in the control of the opposing party”, with a request to the court for an order that such evidence be presented by the opposing party. [...]The requester must present reasonable available evidence to support a claim of infringement. It would be sufficient to show that the patent is “about to be infringed”, that is no actual infringement needs to have occurred. The court may order these measures ex parte, especially where any delay is likely to cause irreparable harm to the patentee or where there is a demonstrable risk of evidence being destroyed. The defendant must be given notice and there will be oral proceedings or a written review on the appropriateness of the measures taken, which may end in modification, revocation or confirmation. [...]this is extended to information on the origin and distribution network of goods, and to persons who are not the original infringers, but in a position of infringing goods on a commercial scale. [...] any infringer must pay damages to the patentee, appropriate to the actual prejudice suffered as a result of the infringement. In establishing damages, all negative economic consequences must be taken into account, including the injured party’s lost profits, the infringer’s unfair profits and even moral prejudice caused to the patentee by the infringement.”

    http://www.managingip.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1321392
    (“European directive brings changes” paragraph)

    Well, the order looks legit to me. I doubt 10.000 euros per day is a well-founded evaluation of the losses though.

  • GoodNews

    So, now they have a new weapon. I bet they’ll abuse it everywhere.

    Well, time to find one of our own.

  • Windoze

    Well it is FTD’s fault not being in court.

  • response to IR

    In the event of revocation of the injunction isnt the patentee liable for all losses, interuptions, legal fees, etc that the injunction is the cause of?

  • Anonymous

    @idiots
    They weren’t informed of an existence of whatever the MAFIAA wanted against them. Ergo they couldn’t attend the hearing.

  • truth

    I wonder can they call the filenames the md5/sha1 of the contents ?

  • anonymous

    tnx to #13 for explanation.
    so the fact that i may be thinking of breaking into a house and perhaps stealing something, or not, could possibly get me locked up? wow! i better stop thinking about everything in case i have thoughts that someone might be able to interpret as being naughty! getting worse!

  • A_E

    @ 17 May 13, 2010 at 19:35 by response to IR

    The judge has the option to define a certain amount to be set aside, to be paid out to the accused in case the verdict is canceled in a preliminary injunction (to be initiated by the accused).

    By the way, here is the Dutch article describing the situation when an ex parte is possible: http://wetboek.net/Rv/1019e.html

    And it is quite questionable whether the requirements to allow this step are even met.

  • Trelew

    The further abuses of power by the corporate elite continue.

  • anon2

    seems there have been some nasty changes made to the law. not only are you now assumed guilty, simply because you have been accused, unless you can prove your innocence, you can now be accused, found guilty, sentenced and have retalitary measures set against you for not complying with the verdict, even though you didn’t know there was a charge against you, let alone a court case or that a guilty verdict been passed down on to you. what sort of justice is that?

  • A_E

    @23

    Well it is of course quite questionable. And that’s why the judge should only allow this after very careful consideration. Something completely disregarded here.

    Someone claimed that his judge has been quite liberal with ex parte cases in the past already. That would be quite worrying.

  • Mbb

    Im using FTD for 4-5 years know, first we were losing the NZB button and now this….

  • nonw00t

    Good sir, the bank is down the street. Oh no! Did I just make the bank available to a potential bank robber?? Better not move to the Netherlands.

  • Mbb

    @ nonw00t

    weed, prostitutes and all that shit is still legal here :)

  • Gwiz

    Lol @ Mbb

    The Netherlands – where you can share your weed and women – just not your filenames. LOL

  • the Queef

    At this moment everything is normal and running just fine at FTD, so that wil be the first 10 grand of the day then.
    “Komt een vrouw bij de dokter” is what we call overhere a “Kutfilmpje”,but I’m dl that bitch at this moment just to delete and dl again…
    And where is Tim Kuik and his mighty BREIN,wasn’t he able to prevent the spoiling of our usenets with this crap ??

  • Fugasmic

    This is just getting ridiculous now and you can be sure they will be putting VCDQ squarely in their gun-sights as well.

  • IR

    The article doesn’t state whether or not FTD admins were noticed about the hearing, so I assumed they were. Anyway, FTD wrote here that they had no chance to defend themselves http://www.fighttodefeat.nl/index_nieuws.html
    Looks like a questionable and arbitrary interpretation of the law by the court.
    This case and the pending one with BREIN are very similar to the original TPB trial and considering how it ended and the flaws in the Dutch legal system I’m afraid FTD will have to move outside the NL or outside the web.

    That’s Liberism, baby, Liberism, and there is nothing we can do, nothing.

  • Pico

    Lets also go filter wiki (for example), esp articles that go in deep about murders and how their minds work. After all, since it’s public accessible info, one can use it to become a killer himself

  • Aerilus

    seems to me like these judges need to spend more time reading case briefs and keeping up with the law and less time playing golf and getting smoozed. but hey when I am 80 and rich i plan to do whatever i feel like whenever i feel like i am just surprised we don’t here of judges falling asleep more often during trial

  • jon

    we are all evil do not talk about movies it might lead to piracy. i must be on another planet. what a complete and utter lunacy . pirate everthing fu im

  • DanielRemains

    Hahaha. They will block the whole internet and when they see how their pockets will get empty things will go back to normal. Imagine an internet without file-sharing. Nothing would get known. Youtube helps a bit with the trailers but I’m so sure trailers sharing will be illegal too.

    Movie/Music industries, the ones that will be hurt by all this will be you and only YOU.

    Try this: Spit in the air and wait a few seconds. It will fall back in your face.

  • TRYER

    How nice. Get sued and convicted without your knowledge and for following the law.

    What kind of FUCKED UP law is that?

  • Anonymous

    WARNING!

    Don’t say or write
    “Komt een vrouw bij de dokter”

    Chit I wrote “Komt een vrouw bij de dokter”!

  • Anonymous

    Good luck to them. Not as if the courts are going to listen though.

  • Anonymous

    @39

    Because sites like that aren’t selling music legally, they’re just selling pirated copies at a few cents each and keeping the cash for themselves. There’s a reason why they’re hosted in countries like the Ukraine.

    Also it’s impossible to “track someone” using usenet unless they bust down the door of your usenet provider and install monitoring software on their servers. Which isn’t going to happen. Any good provider won’t keep logs of what you’ve downloaded from them and they all offer encrypted connections.

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  • Fiml34*

    How did i Posted words

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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