Brein, the Dutch anti-piracy organization has taken down 6 dutch torrentsites. Among these sites is Dutchnova, a torrentsite with 25.000 members. Brein gave the sites a choice: admit you infringe copyright and give us all the information about your members or we will sue you. These threatening and intimidating talk seems to work, although Brein has no legal power, they do have the money to sue.
The Brein press release states that the webmasters could face up to four years in prison or a $54.000 fine. This seems very unlikely, but threatening enough to people who don’t know better.
The Dutchnova site is closed by the webmasters because their hosting provider asked them to, and they want to keep a good relation with their provider. Dutchnova:
Unfortunately our hosting provider reported that a complaint was filed by BREIN in which they argue that Dutchnova is spreading copyrighted material and that there’s a “financial motive” to run the site (whatever that may mean)
This is not true and is pure intimidation!
However, relationship with our hosting provider is worth a lot to us so for now we comply to their request and take the site offline.
Thanks for the good times!
Witheet.com talked to Divxlover, who used to be a part of the Dutchnova team and reports:
According to Divxlover, one of the volunteers at Dutchnova, Brein’s got what they wanted by intimidating Dutchnova’s hosting provider Denit Services. The 25.000 members of the site need to find another place to get their torrents.
Brein wants to file a complaint against Dutchnova, unless they admit publicly on their website that they infringed copyright, and promise that they will never do it again. Moreover, Brein wants all the available information on the members of Dutchnova. If they comply to these requests, Brein will drop the case.
“This is pure intimidation” according to Divxlover. He thinks that the complaint is just a default letter that Brein sends out to scare people who don’t know better. “they even say we’re commercial, that’s a pertinent lie, we never made any money off the site” Divxlover continues.”And we never infringed any copyright, since there are no copyrighted files physically available on our server” Divxlover. In the meanwhile Dutchnova destroyed their database, this means their members don’t have to worry that their information will end up at Brein’s office.
